sy 
96 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
apartments to restore to order, or some demolished 
ones to rebuild. : 
After their annual labours are begun, few are igno- 
rant how incessantly ants are engaged in building or re- 
pairing their habitations, in collecting provisions, and in 
the care of their young brood; but scarcely any are aware 
of the extent to which their activity is carried, and that 
their labours are going on even in the night.—Yet this is 
a certain fact.—Long ago Aristotle affirmed that ants 
worked in the night when the moon was at the full? ; 
and their historian Gould observes, ‘that they even ex- 
ceed the painful industrious bees. For the ants employ 
each moment, by day and night, almost without inter- 
mission, unless hindered by excessive rains>.” M. Huber 
also, speaking of a mason-ant, not found with us, tells us 
that they work after sun-set, and in the night*. To 
these I can add some observations of my own, which 
fully confirm these accounts. My first were made at nine 
o'clock at night, when I found the inhabitants of a nest 
of the red ant (Myrmica rubra) very busily employed; I 
repeated the observation, which I could conveniently do, 
the nest being in my garden, at various times from that 
hour till twelve, and always found some going and 
coming, even while a heavy rain was falling. Having 
in the day noticed some Aphides upon a thistle, I ex- 
amined it again in the night, at about eleven o’clock, 
and found my ants busy milking their cows, which did 
not for the sake of repose intermit their suction. At the 
same hour, another night, I observed the little negro 
ant (F. fusca) engaged in the same employment upon an 
* Hist. Animal. |. ix. ce. 38. » Gould, 68. © Huber, 35, 42. 
