128 
Psyche 
[December 
above low tide and but few hundred feet from open salt water 
and again near Baltimore in the region of Cowenton on the neck 
between Bird River and the Gunpowder at an elevation of much 
less than one hundred feet. 
One important factor in restricting these mounds to hilly 
country may well be not so much the elevation as the probable 
association of good cultivation with level and lower lying land 
while in the hills there are greater opportunities for partly wooded 
regions, especially abandoned fields and clearings growing up 
with new woods and left comparatively free from live stock and 
human interferences, so that the colonies of ants may find both 
food and freedom from disturbance for long periods of years. 
The classical account of the mound building ants of America 
is that of the enthusiastic student of ants, the late Rev. Henry 
C. McCook, who camped out for a week in August 1876 amongst 
the ant communities one mile north-east of Hollidaysburg near 
Altoona, Pennsylvania, where there were some fifty acres of ant 
mounds on the southwest base of Bush mountain belonging to 
the Cambria Coal and Iron Co. This region of sandy, stoney soil 
grown up with open woods of oak and few pines was known to the 
people of the region as the “Ant City”: and at the present date 
the trolley station there is labelled “Ant Hills.” In this com- 
munity or city were no less than 1700 dwellings; 25 to 33 to the 
acre. In other neighboring regions: Warriors Mark and Pine 
Hill: there were in the former 30 to the acre (but some were 
abandoned and moss grown) and in the latter 1800 dwellings at 
the rate of 30 to 59 per acre. 
Not only were the mounds so numerous but some were of 
great size, 10-12 feet around the base and 2J^-3 feet high. A 
photograph published by McCook shows a mound that was 25 
feet around, 6 ft. 9 in. up the West front, 3 ft. 6 in. up the East, 
4 ft. 4 in. on the South and 4 ft. 3 in. down the North face. 
Another photograph represents a mound 24 inches in vertical 
height and a third one 32 in height. 
At Warriors Mark and Pine Hill he records even larger 
mounds. A fine cone was 12 feet across over the top and 30 feet 
around the base. While the largest of all three thousand or more 
seen was 42 inches in vertical height and 58 feet around the base 
