4l6 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



their holes. At this season you will commonly find at the 

 surface only workers, pupae, and eggs. If now a spade 

 be deeply thrust into the earth and the whole nest turned 

 out, you may be able to discover the queens, much larger 

 than the workers, and the white maggot-like larvae. At 

 this season you are not likely to find any winged ants in 

 the nest, but later, in August or September, the air may 

 be filled with them, flying in every direction, If we now 

 visit an ants' nest or some ant-hill in the neighborhood, 

 we may see swarms of winged males and females issuing 

 from the ground and taking flight. This is their wedding 

 journey, and after it the males soon die. The females 

 either join a colony of the same species as one of its 

 queens or found a new colony. They tear off their wings 

 as of no further use, or the workers do this for them. 



Any species that is common in the neighborhood may 

 serve as the basis for these lessons, but perhaps the best 

 ones to work with, aside from the ants that infest the 

 house, described in Chapter V, are the following : 



The carpenter ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus , one of 

 our largest black ants. Its nests are built in timbers of 

 buildings, logs, and even trees, by excavating a complicated 

 series of passages and chambers. A nest of this species 

 may be arranged for study, if one is not convenient out- 

 side, by bringing the wood in which they are working 

 into the schoolroom and mounting it on two bricks which 

 stand in shallow pans of water. This latter is to prevent 

 them from escaping into the room. 



The mound-building ant, Formica exsectoides, is perhaps 

 our most conspicuous species on account of its large hills, 

 often from one to two feet in height and five or six feet 



