73 
STRANGE DWELLINGS. 
height and fourteen or fifteen inches in thickness ; and lastly, 
he must have gone over the whole of his work again, and 
smoothed the interior until it was exactly true, straight, and 
level. All this work must also have been done without the least 
assistance, and the ground most be supposed to be filled with 
huge boulders, and covered with tree trunks, broken logs, and 
other impediments. 
The most admirable subterranean architecture is perhaps that 
of the Brown Ant ( Formica brunnea ), a species which is not 
very commonly known in this country, and is probably confined 
to certain localities. Its habitation and the mode of its con- 
struction have been carefully noted by M. Huber. 
This ant works mostly at night, and during light, misty rain, 
the sunbeams being obnoxious, and heavy showers causing much Ij 
inconvenience. The nest is a most complicated structure, com- 1 
posed of a series of stories, often reaching thirty or forty in 
number, and generally being built in a sloping direction. These 
stories are not composed of regular cells, like those of the bee, 
wasp, and hornet, but of chambers and galleries of very irre- 
gular form and dimensions, beautifully smoothed in the interior, 
and about one-fifth of an inch in height. The walls are about 
the twenty-fourth of an inch in thickness. The object of so 
many stories is to be able to regulate the heat and moisture of 
their establishments. If, for example, the sun is not very I 
powerful, and the instinct of the little insects tells them that 
more heat is required in order to hatch the pupae which are 
undergoing their metamorphosis, they take up the white burdens 
and carry them into the upper chambers, where the heat is 
greater than below. 
Again, if there should be a heavy rain, which floods all the 
lower stories, nothing is easier for the inhabitants than to remove 
themselves and brood into the upper sets of chambers, where 
they will be secure from the inundation. On those days when 
the sun is peculiarly hot, the ants secure a more equable tempe- | 
rature, by removing the young brood to the central flats, if they 
can be so called, while they themselves can obtain the needful 
moisture from the lower parts of the nest, to which the sunbeams 
cannot penetrate. Were it not for this provision which they 
