Fig. 363.—Ashy-black Ant (Formica nigra). Male, female, and worker.
The masons work when they can profit by the rain or by the evening dew, to make their mortar. They only go out after sunset, or when a fine rain has wetted their roof. Then they set to work. They roll up pellets of earth, bring them back in their mandibles, and stick them on to those places where the building was left unfinished. From all sides the earth-workers may be seen arriving, laden with materials. All these are bustling, hurrying, busy, but always in the greatest order, and with a perfect understanding among themselves. Every part of the building is going on at the same time. The apartments spring up one above another, and the edifice visibly rises. The rain, the sun, and the wind consolidate and harden the building so cunningly contrived by these industrious workers, who have received from God alone their marvellous science. With no other tool than their mandibles, the excavators work their way through the hardest wood. They bore holes right through it, riddling it completely with numerous storeys of horizontal galleries. The Yellow Ant raises its little hillocks in fields, and passes the winter in a burrow or underground dwelling-place.
Fig. 364.—Ashy Ant. Male, worker, and female.
Independent of the principal entrances, there exist, in some nests, masked doors guarded by sentinels. Many species also hollow out covered galleries, which they only unmask in extreme danger, either to open an outlet for the besieged, or to turn the enemy who has already invaded the place. Ant-hills are, in fact, perfect fortresses, defended by a thousand ingenious contrivances, and guarded by sentinels always on the qui vive.
| Fig. 365.—Larva of the Red Ant. (Myrmica rubra). | Fig. 366.—Pupa of the Red Ant (Myrmica rubra) magnified. |
The domestic life of the different species is nearly the same. The birth and rearing of the little ones, and the duties of the adults, do not differ perceptibly from each other in the various species of ants. The females live together in harmony. They lay, without ceasing to walk about, white eggs of cylindrical form and microscopic dimensions. The workers pick them up, and carry them to special chambers. In a fortnight after the laying, the larva ([Fig. 365]) appears. Its body is transparent. A head and wings can be made out, but no legs; the mouth is a retractile nipple, bordered by rudimentary mandibles, into which the workers disgorge the juices they have elaborated in their stomachs; and as they lay by no provisions, they are obliged to gather each day the sugary liquids destined for the food of the larvæ.
From their birth, a troop of nurses is charged with the care of them. They put them out in the open air during the day. Hardly has the sun risen, when the ants, placed just under the roof, go to tell those which are beneath, by touching them with their antennæ, or shaking them with their mandibles. In a few seconds, all the outlets are crowded with workers carrying out the larvæ in order to place them on the top of the ant-hill, that they may be exposed to the beneficent heat of sun. When the larvæ have remained some time in the same place, their guardians move them away from the direct action of the solar rays, and put them in chambers a little way from the top of the hill, where a milder heat can still reach them. We then see the ants themselves taking the well-earned luxury of a few minutes' rest, heaping themselves up together, right in the sun. There is no observant inhabitant of the country who has not seen the curious spectacle which we have just mentioned—that is to say, the population of an ants' nest carrying into the sun the young nurslings, so that they may experience the action of the solar heat. We recommend the dweller in towns who is in the country for a day to stretch himself out near an ant-hill in the warm weather, and witness this spectacle, one of the most curious in Nature. The care which the working ants bestow on their young does not consist only in nourishing them and procuring for them a proper temperature; they have also to keep them extremely clean. With their palpi they clean them, brush them, distend their skin, and thus prepare them for the critical trial of their metamorphosis.