THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. xx.—AUGUST, 1886.—No. 8. 
ANTS’ NESTS AND THEIR INHABITANTS} 
BY JOHN B. SMITH. 
edie nests are found everywhere ; in the woods, in the fields, 
under the stone-walks of cities and in houses. Not only on 
the ground, but in the trees; and not only in the trunks, but 
among the leaves. They are as varied in design and general 
structure as are the localities inhabited, and while some species 
are content to take advantage of a simple cavity under a stone, 
where they rear their young ; others build great hills full of in- 
tricate galleries extending long distances into and under the 
= §found. Volumes have been written on the subject, and many 
4 More will be written before either the subject or the public is r 
exhausted, My object this evening is not to speak of the nests , 
of the ants so much as of their inhabitants. These are, of course, 
Primarily the ants themselves, and by disturbing a moderate-sized 
nest of any of our larger species, the observer will become | 
ily convinced that the population is not a small one. But not — 
ants alone are found in these nests—there is a very distinct fauna 
that lives with, and perhaps partly on, the ants, and the species of ~ 
which are never found elsewhere. ae 
Many hundreds of specimens, principally of Coleoptera, are 
a found in them, and in Europe nests have been found where © 
oc the intruders or guests exceeded in numbers the ants themselves. 
The number of species known to inhabit such nests in Europe | 
Teaches well into the hundreds, over a hundred species having 
been found ina single nest, while in America comparatively few = 
Pecies have been found. There is a reason for that too. Collec- — 
"Read before the Biological Society of Washington, May 29th, 1886. : 
Yok. 3X—No, vin, , "o 
