Packard.] 
INSECTS AS ARCHITECTS. 
317 
foot or more from the centre of the pavement. Within these 
mounds are neatly constructed cells into which the “eggs, 
young ones, and their stores of grain, are carried in time of 
rainy seasons.” In another place he adds that “some old 
settlements have a pavement fifteen feet in diameter and a 
mound in the centre a foot high.” The roads extend for 
half a mile from the “formicary,” or ant hill. 
One kind of Mexican ant (Pseudomyrma jlavidula) is 
known to live within the spines of the Mimosa, the hole for 
the entrance and exit of the ants fig. 247. 
being made near the end (Fig. 
247, a). a 
In India, a greenish ant ( GEco - 
phylla smaragdina) is said by Jer- 
don to form a nest, sometimes a 
foot in diameter, by drawing living 
leaves together without detaching 
them from the branch, and uniting 
them with a fine white web. An¬ 
other Indian ant, like the paper 
wasp, “makes a small nest about 
half an inch, or rather more, in diameter, of some papyra¬ 
ceous material, which it fixes on a leaf.” (Jerdon.) The 
ants belonging to the genus Crematogaster, and which from 
. their resemblance to a wig are known by the popular name 
of “Negro-head” in Brazil, according to Mr. F. Smith, 
“ construct their nests on the branches of trees, suspending 
them in the same way as wasps, to the nests of which they 
have a close resemblance ; on removing the outer covering, 
however, they exhibit a very different construction, being 
composed of multitudinous, curved, intricate ramifications, 
all leading to the interior chambers and galleries.” 
There are many sand wasps which excavate holes in the 
ground, and deposit at the bottom of their burrow living 
but paralyzed insects among which they lay their eggs. A 
29 
