24 HABITATIONS OF ANTS. 
up into conical masses. Some construct their nests of 
earth, the cells being partly above, partly below, the 
natural level. Some are entirely underground, others 
eat into the trunks of old trees. 
In warmer climates the variations are still more 
numerous. Formica bisptnosa, of Cayenne, forms its 
nest of the cottony matter from the capsules of Bombax. 
Sykes has described! a species of Myrmica which 
builds in trees and shrubs, the nest consisting of thin 
leaves of cow-dung, arranged like tiles on the roof of a 
house; the upper leaf, however, covering the whole. 
In some cases the nests are very extensive. Bates 
mentions that while he was at Pardé an attempt was 
made to destroy a nest of the Sauba ants by blowing 
into it the fumes of sulphur, and he saw the smoke 
issue from a great number of holes, some of them not 
less than seventy yards apart. 
A community of ants must not be confused with an 
ant hill in the ordinary sense. Very often indeed a 
community has only one dwelling, and in most species 
seldom more than three or four. Some, however, form 
numerous colonies. M. Forel even found a case in 
which one nest of F. exsecta had no less than two 
hundred colonies, and occupied a circular space with a 
radius of nearly two hundred yards. Within this area 
they had exterminated all the other ants, except a few 
nests of Tapinoma. erraticum, which survived, thanks 
to their great agility. In these cases the number of 
! Trans. Ent. Svc., vol. i. 
