Packard.] 
INSECTS AS ARCHITECTS. 
315 
about thirty feet. Another species in Brazil, according to 
Rev. Hamlet Clark, will tunnel a ditch, and he adds, “ Indeed, 
I have been assured again and again by sensible men, that 
it has undermined, in its progress through the country, the 
great river Paraiba, as broad as the Thames at London 
Bridge ; at any rate, without anything like a natural or arti¬ 
ficial bridge, it appears on the other side and continues its 
course.’’ 
It would be exceedingly interesting to watch the succes¬ 
sive steps of this tunnelling process, to learn how they plan 
their work, how the mine is run under the stream with such 
true engineering skill from one side to the other; how the 
danger of undermining and flooding are overcome. Here 
we have a slight anticipation of the Thames tunnel, though 
this is said to have been suggested by the tunnel of the 
ship worm, which lines its hole with limestone. 
Ants also dig wells. The same Texan (Ecodoma, we are 
told by Dr. Lincecum, needs water as much as cattle or men, 
and like the latter they dig their own wells. In one case, 
where a man dug a well reaching water at a depth of thirty 
feet, the ants dug a well to the same depth, with a diameter 
of twelve inches. 
As mound builders the ants are indefatigable. With the 
aid of their jaws they carry out grain after grain of sand, 
and from being primarily tunnellers, they become mound- 
builders. An ant hill, common object as it is, is a marvel 
of patient and untiring labor. Think of the toil and mus¬ 
cular exertion spent by these ants in climbing from the 
depths below up the perpendicular walls of their nests with 
their burdens; and busy as they appear to us by day, they 
are said to do the greater part of their work by night. In 
clayey countries in Mexico the CEcodomas build enormous 
ant hills, “so that one perceives them from afar by the pro¬ 
jection which they form above the level of the soil, as well 
as by the absence of vegetation in their immediate neighbor- 
27 
