spread mortar. Ants may be said to 
have the followingoccupations : House- 
wives, nurses, teachers, spinners, men- 
ials, marauders, soldiers, undertakers, 
hunters, gardeners, agriculturalists, 
architects, sculptors, roadmakers, min- 
eralogists, and gold miners. 
Ants keep cows — the aphides — for 
which they sometimes build stables and 
place in separate stalls from the cocci, 
which they also use. They make gran- 
aries where they store ant rice. If the 
grain begins to sprout they are wise 
enough to cut off the sprout. If it gets 
wet they have often been seen carry- 
ing it up to the sunshine to dry and 
thus prevent sprouting. The honey- 
ant is herself a storehouse of food in 
case of famine. This kind of ant has 
a distension of the abdomen in which 
honey is stored by the workers for 
cases of need. They inject the honey 
into the mouth of the ant. When it is 
needed she forces it up to her lips by 
means of the muscles of the abdomen. 
It is said that the Mexicans like to cul- 
ture honey ants and eat the honey 
themselves. 
The leaf-cutting ant is the gardener. 
It is devoted to growing mushrooms or 
at least a kind of fungi of which it is 
fond. This accounts for the beds of 
leaves it carries to its nest, on which 
the fungi develop. 
The Roman naturalist, Pliny, gives 
an account of some ants in India which 
extract gold from mines during the 
winter. In the summer, when they re- 
tire to their holes to escape the heat, 
the people steal their gold. McCook 
has found that we have ants who are 
mineralogists, as they cover their hill 
with small" stones, bits of fossils and 
minerals, for which they go down like 
miners more than a yard deep into the 
earth. 
That some kinds of ants are archi- 
tects has been cearly proven, for an 
observer saw an ant. architect order his 
workmen to alter a defective arch, 
which they did, apparently to suit his 
views of how arches should be con- 
structed! 
The ants who act as sculptors work 
in wood. The red ants of the forest 
build storied houses in trees with pil- 
lars for support. There is a little 
brown ant which makes a house forty 
stories high; half the rooms are below 
ground. There are pillars, buttresses, 
galleries, and various rooms with arched 
roofs. This ant works in clay. If her 
material becomes too dry she is com- 
pelled to wait for moisture. 
The blind ant is a remarkable builder. 
She makes long galleries above ground. 
She does not use cement as some ants 
do, so she builds rapidly and her struc- 
ture is flimsy. 
The Saiiva ants of Brazil are skillful 
masons. They construct chambers as 
large as a man's head that have im- 
mense domes, and outlets seventy 
yards long. The Brazilians say that 
the Indians, in cases of wounds, when 
it was necessary to close them as with 
stitching, used the jaws of the Saiiva 
ant. The ant was seized by the body 
and placed so that the mandibles were 
one on each side of the cut. Then, 
when pressed against the flesh, the ant 
would close the mandibles and unite 
the two sides of the cut as firmly as a 
good stitch would do it. A quick twist 
of the ant's body separated it from the 
head. After a few days the heads were 
removed with a knife and the opera- 
tion was complete. 
In view of this we are tempted to 
say that ants are also surgeons, but die 
themselves instead of having their pa- 
tients do so! 
A friend who has lived long in Bra- 
zil tells me that the Saiiva ants are so 
large the nuns in the convents use their 
bodies to dress as dolls, making them 
represent soldiers, brides and grooms, 
and so forth. 
One species of ants do nothing ex- 
cept capture slaves. These are not 
able to make their own nests, to feed 
their larvae, or even to feed themselves, 
but are so helpless they would die if 
neglected by their servants. There are 
three species that keep slaves, but 
these are not the only ones who go to 
war, as the usually peaceful agricul- 
tural ants sometimes get short of seed 
and go forth to plunder each other's 
nests. 
It is stated that a thousand species 
of ants are known. No doubt there is 
much of interest about each kind. The 
"Driver Ant" is so choice of time and 
in 
