If you put a nest of ants with plenty of earth into a large glass jar, and put some food near by for the ants to eat, they may settle down in the jar, to make a home. If you cover the outside of the jar with thick, dark paper, the ants may build close to the glass. Then, when you take off the paper, you will be able to see the halls and storerooms.
You might put such a jar in a safe place out of doors. Then you would be able to study the ants, as they roam around near by, or do their work inside the jar.
LESSON V.
THE ANTS ON A TRIP.
The round hole in the ant-hill is called the gate. The ants can close it with a bit of stone. Often there are two, three, or even more, gates for one ant-hill. Once I saw a hill with six large gates.
Now I will tell you of a very queer ant-hill. It was made by big black ants, in a little valley between two hills of sand.
Into this valley had blown a very large sheet of thick paper. It had been around a ham and was very greasy. It had lain on the ground, crumpled up, in sun, and snow, and rain, for a year.
By that time it was hard and stiff, and weeds had grown up about it. One day, as I was going by, I saw ants running in and out of the folds of the paper. I took a stick and turned the top fold open like a lid.
It was full of ants and of white pupa-cases. The ants, I think, liked the folds of the paper for halls, and the larger wrinkles for rooms. They had found out how to have a house without much work in making it.
When I opened this paper-hill, they ran in swarms to pick up the white bundles. Poor things! They did not know where to go for safety. So I laid the lid of their house back in its place, and soon they were quiet again.