Vegetable Soil. 
380 
[July, 
me, in many other localities, to turn over the surface stones to 
see what buried them, and nearly invariably my general 
conclusions have been that it was mostly due to vegetable 
growth and decay, except in an ant country. 
In May, 1881, I had occasion to visit the great Saltee, off 
the South coast of Wexford, and in one cliff numerous birds 
were nesting. As I wanted to know what kinds of birds 
were there, I got my companion to go and roll down stones 
over the cliff. He had never previously seen so many birds 
congregated together, and when I joined him he asked me if 
I would roll down some stones that he might see the flight. 
While he was going round to the opposite side of the coose, 
I employed myself raising stones to roll down, which I found 
very difficult to do, as all were nearly entirely buried in a 
sort of peaty soil. This I could not at first account for, as 
there was no ant-work, — nor a worm to be seen,— while the 
peat was of a class evidently not solely due to vegetable 
growth and decay. After carefully examining the place the 
only conclusion I could arrive at was, that, during the pre- 
valent winds from the S.W., the debris of the peat and of 
the granite was blown from a neighbouring gap and lodged 
here; it subsequently being consolidated by vegetable 
growth. 
The Irish ants have distinct peculiarities. One species 
affedt moist low ground, on which they build high pinnacles, 
keeping to the same place year after year ; others keep to 
the stiff upland, where they work very similarly ; while 
another kind keep to the wild land, where they make large 
flattish hills ; but those with which we are now interested 
always plant their colony at a surface stone. Of the latter 
the first colonists seem to take up their abode under the 
stone, and make innumerable galleries and cells to lay their 
eggs in : this is generally in April and May, but this year 
(1882) I found them working in the latter end of February. 
As the weather gets warm they extend their work to the 
outside, and gradually creep up on it. The stone appears to 1 
be used as a generator of heat, or, perhaps more correctly, I 
as an equaliser of heat (stones on the surface of the grass 
promoting heat in winter and cool in summer), because when 
a stone is entirely, or nearly entirely covered, the ants will 
leave it. Some of the ants are extraordinary workers. In 
parts of Clare and Galway the crags of mountain limestone 
are perfectly bare ; yet I have seen a colony of ants take a 
fancy to a stone lying on one of them, and build an ant-hill 
against it. Where they got the materials to build the hill it 
is hard to say, unless they travelled all about the surface of 
