4 
is 
: 
iy 
2 
THE AGRICULTURAL ANT. 515 
she has deepened sufficiently for her wings to prevent her free in- 
gress, she deliberately withdraws and with her sharp mandibles 
clips them off. She now continues her labors until the hole is six 
or seven inches deep, and excavating a small cell at the bottom, 
she closes the passage above, and remains sleeping in her little cell 
nine or ten days. If she survives that long, she comes out, pro- ` 
cures some food and goes to work, deposits twenty or thirty eggs, 
raises them to maturity ;—they are all workers—and after this 
the queen or mother ant is seen outside no more. She conceals 
the entrance to her kingdom, keeps her workers busy, increases 
their number rapidly, and in the course of eighteen months, find- 
ing her armies sufficiently strong, she throws off all disguise and 
clearing a considerable space around the gate of the city com- 
mences to pave it and to build up a monument or pyramid. This 
last is a public work as well as the pavement, and it is carried on 
slowly by the police, who are always found on and around the en- 
virons of the city. 
Thus have I partially described the origin and progress of a 
Single successful mother ant of the mound building species. 
Were all that fly away from those astonishing connubial assem- 
blies equally successful, it would require but very few years for 
meri to overpeople the whole earth. But nature, as she has done 
în all other races of animal life, has made provisions for the 
destruction of the superfluous queens. Great numbers of them 
never return from the little cell they have prepared for themselves 
at the bottom of their new home. They die either from having 
Packed the dirt in the hole above them, or from being found by the 
hunters or soldiers of the surrounding kingdoms, whose custom it 
” whenever they discover one of these new beginnings for a city, 
invariably to dig out and assassinate the occupant. Many birds 
are fond of the females of this species of ant, devouring all they 
can find. There are many other causes for the failure of these fat 
Meens which, according to my observations on the subject, result 
in the conclusion, that not exceeding one in a thousand of those 
imning a nest survives and builds up a colony. 
T have witnessed several of their grand connubial festivals. 
i, saw in 1858, that occupied a plat of ground 107 yards in 
ey and ten yards wide. The ground was thickly strewn with 
AP T When I first discovered them they were coming from 
ery direction, and lighting down on the above described plat by 
