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with large mandibles or biting-jaws, which constitute efficient weapons of attack or defence ; 

 while the worker-minors build and repair, collect food, attend to the young, and perform 

 other household duties. 



3. Ants' Xests. 



Every one, no doubt, is familiar with the external appearance of many kinds of ants' 

 nests, from the minute species which throw up little hills of sand, in our garden walks, to 

 the large varieties which construct great mounds of rubbish in the woods and pasture 

 lands. Few, however, have much acquaintance with the mode of construction, and the 

 arrangement of these strange dwellings. The following account is given by Kirby and 

 Spence : 



" The nest of the large red ants, which are common in woods, at the first aspect seems 

 a very confused mass. Exteriorly it is a conical mound, composed of pieces of straw, 

 fragments of wood, little stones, leaves, grain — in short, of any portable materials within 

 their reach. But however rude its outward appearance, and the articles of which it 

 consists, interiorly it presents an arrangement admirably calculated at once for protection 

 against the excessive heat of the sun, and vet to retain a due degree of genial warmth. 

 It is wholly composed of numerous small appartments of different sizes, communicating 

 with each other by means of galleries, and arranged in separate storeys, some very deep in 

 the earth, others a considerable height above it — the former for the reception of the young 

 in cold weather and at night, the latter adapted to their use in the daytime. In forming 

 these, the ants mix the earth excavated from the bottom of the nest with the other 

 materials of which the mound consists, and thus give solidity to the whole. Besides the 

 avenues which join the apartments together, other galleries, varying in dimensiorls, com- 

 municate with the outside of the nest at the top of the mound. These open doors would 

 seem ill-calculated for precluding the admission of wet, or of nocturnal enemies : but the 

 ants alter their dimensions continually according to circumstances : and they wholly close 

 them at night, when all gradually retire to the interior, and a few sentinels only are left 

 to guard the gates. On rainy days, too, they keep them shut, and when the sky is cloudy 

 open them partially. 



" The habitations of these ants are much larger than those of any other species in 

 this country, and sometimes as big as a small haycock ; but they are mere molehills when 

 compared with the enormous mounds which other species, apparently of the same family, 

 but much larger, construct in warmer climates. Malouet states, that in the forests of 

 Guiana, he once saw ant-hills which, though his companion would not suffer him to 

 approach nearer than forty paces for fear of his being devoured, seeemed to him to be 

 fifteen or twenty feet high, and thirty or forty feet in diameter at the base, assuming the 

 form of a pyramid, truncated at one-third of its height ; and Stedman, when in Surinam, 

 once passed ant-hills six feet high, and at least one hundred feet in circumference. In 

 the plains of Paraguay, where the ants commit great devastations, a species described by 

 Dobrizhoffer forms conical earthen nests three or more ells high, and as hard as stone ; 

 and in the Bungo forest in New South Wales, a very small ant builds nests of indurated 

 clay eight or ten feet high." These immense mounds are probably the work of some 

 species of Termites or white ants, not of the Formicidce. 



" The nest of Formica brunnea is composed wholly of earth, and consists of a great 

 number of storeys, sometimes not fewer than forty, twenty below the level of the soil, and 

 as many above, which last, following the slope of the ant-hill, are concentric. Each storey, 

 separately examined, exhibits cavities in the shape of saloons, narrower apartments, and 

 long galleries which preserve the communication between both. The arched roofs of the 

 most spacious rooms are supported by very thin walls, or occasionally by small pillars and 

 true buttresses ; some having only one entrance from above, others a second communica- 

 ting with the lower story. The main galleries, of which in some places several meet in 

 one large saloon, communicate with other subterranean passages, which are often carried 

 to the distance of several feet from the hill. These insects work chiefly after sunset. In 

 building their nest they employ soft clay only, scraped from its bottom when sufficiently 

 moistened by a shower, which, far from injuring, consolidates and strengthens their archi- 



