A “ COWSHED ” HUNT. 
59 
“cows.” The ants convey the honey to the mouth with the 
ends of the antennae, which are enlarged and used as fingers. 
A small number of secretions will satisfy an ant at one time, and 
if the ants fail to visit the aphids often, the honey is dropped 
upon a leaf, where the ant may find it upon his return. If the 
supply of honey becomes exhausted, the ant is obliged to wait 
until the aphids have taken further nourishment. 
The nest of the ant colony is usually built, like that of other 
ants, under stones or decayed wood, but sometimes in a low 
shrub. In this case the ant gathers material from decaying 
wood, forms it into a pulp, and with that builds the nest. This 
Shed-builder ant, which shows such sagacity, is one of our small 
species. It measures one-eighth of an inch in length, which is 
not nearly so long as the aristocratic name given him in books 
—“ Cremastogaster lineolata.” Its head and thorax are dark 
brown, and its abdomen black, joined to the thorax by a pe¬ 
duncle of two segments Examine with a lens the tiny Red 
ant, so called, but which, by the way, is yellow, and you will see 
that the slender waist is made of two knots, and these distin¬ 
guish the family Myrmicidae, to which 
the Shed builder ant and the little Red 
ant belong. The antennae, also, are en¬ 
larged at the end, while those of other 
families are filiform. 
Well, before we left the banks of the 
pretty stream and the clump of Dogwood 
with the little “ cowsheds ” which every 
year appear among its branches,^the Am¬ 
bush bug spirit of the collector came over 
a “ cowshed.’’ us once more and we decided to sacrifice 
eleven “ sheds” ; otherwise, perhaps, this sketch would not have 
come to you with the hope to quicken the eyes and interest of any 
who may not have come upon the work of these tiny masons. 
“ Nature seems everywhere to have anticipated the inventions 
of which we boast.” 
Ithaca, N. Y. 
