94 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS.. 
their recruits uncoiled, with their head downwards and 
their body in the air. 
This extraordinary scene continues several days; but 
when all the neuters are acquainted with the road to the 
new city, the recruiting ceases. As soon as a sufficient 
number of apartments to contain them are prepared, the 
young brood, with the males and females, are conveyed 
thither, and the whole business is concluded. When 
the spot thus selected for their residence is at a con- 
siderable distance from the old nest, the ants construct 
some intermediate receptacles, resembling small ant-hills, 
consisting of a cavity filled with fragments of straw and 
other materials, in which they form several cells; and 
here at first they deposit their recruits, males, females, 
and brood, which they afterwards conduct to the final 
settlement. These intermediate stations sometimes be- 
come permanent nests, which however maintain a con- 
nexion with the capital city?. 
While the recruiting is proceeding, it appears to occa- 
sion no sensation in the original nest; all goes on in it as 
usual, and the ants that are not yet recruited pursue their 
ordinary occupations : whence it is evident that the change 
of station is not an enterprise undertaken by the whole 
community. Sometimes many neuters set about this 
business at the same time, which gives a short existence 
(for in the end they all reunite into one) to many sepa- 
rate formicaries. If the ants dislike their new city, they 
quit it for a third, and even for a fourth: and what is re- | 
4 Walking one day early in July, this summer (1815), in a spot 
where [ used to notice asingle nest of Formica rufa, I observed that 
a new colony had been formed of considerable magnitude; and be- 
tween it and the original nest were six or seven smaller settlements. 
