MASON-ANTS. 257 



with perfect familiarity the same compartments as 

 the ants, crawling about with great activity with 

 them, and perfectly domesticated with each other. 

 They were small and white ; but the constant vibra- 

 tion of their antennae, and the alacrity of their mo- 

 tions, manifested a healthy vigour. The ants were 

 in a torpid state ; but on being removed into a tem- 

 perate room, they assumed much of their summer's 

 animation. How these creatures are supported 

 during the winter season it is difficult to compre- 

 hend ; as in no one instance could we perceive any 

 store or provision made for the supply of their 

 wants. The minute size of the larva; manifested 

 that they had been recently deposited ; and conse- 

 quently that their parents had not remained during 

 winter in a dormant state, and thus free from the 

 calls of hunger. The preceding month of February, 

 and part of January, had been remarkably severe ; 

 the frost had penetrated deep into the earth, and long 

 held it frozen ; the ants were in many cases not more 

 than four inches beneath the surface, and must have 

 been enclosed in a mass of frozen soil for a long 

 period ; yet they, their young, and the onisci, were 

 perfectly uninjured by it : affording another proof 

 of the fallacy of the commonly received opinion, that 

 cold is universally destructive to insect life."* 



The earth employed by mason-ants is usually 

 moist clay, either dug from the interior parts of their 

 city, or moistened by rain. The mining-ants and the 

 ash-coloured (Formica fusca) employ earth which is 

 probably not selected with so much care, for it forms 

 a much coarser mortar than what we see used in the 

 structure of the yellow ants (P. flava) and the 

 brown ants (F. brunnea). We have never observed 

 them bringing their building materials of this kind 

 from a distance, like the mason-bees and like the 

 wood or hill-ant (F. ruj'a) ; but they take care, before 

 * . 1 1 1 1 iii i [i I of a Naturalist, page 304, 



