d. Sometimes they
build a high mound around the entrance, and often a large colony will
have many such mounds."

[Illustration:
_A._ Honey ant.
_B._ Ants exchanging greetings.]

"Some ants," added Ben Gile, "dig out their homes in dead logs or hollow
stems. I know of one little fellow who is clever enough to build a shed.
It hunts around to find decayed wood. This it chews into a fine pulp,
then spreads it out into a roof; sometimes it is a good-sized roof. This
same ant dearly loves the honeydew which aphids secrete. So in order to
protect these helpless little green bugs, and make them as comfortable
and contented as possible, they build a neat shed over them. When the
ants wish a dainty luncheon of honeydew they crawl up under the little
shed and get a drink of this sweet juice. Although a colony of ants
lives together so peacefully, Jack, they are apt to be very quarrelsome
with their neighbors; often they go to war with another colony if the
members of that colony happen to trespass on their grounds."

"I found out about some naughty, lazy ants, sir. Instead of taking care
of their own homes and hunting up their own food, they go out to war
against another kind of ant, which is living quietly and attending to
its own business. All the grown-up ants these little fighters either
kill or frighten so that they run away as fast and as far as their legs
will carry them. Then these lazy ants steal the eggs and the babies.
Some of them they eat on the way home, but most of them they carry to
their underground galleries. There they take good care of them until
they are grown up. Then these stolen babies become the slaves of the
lazy ants; but the poor little slaves have never known any other life,
so they cheerfully serve their masters, doing everything for them; in
fact, so long have these masters had little slaves to wait upon them
that they do not know at all how to look out for themselves. They have
been known to starve to death rather than to feed themselves."

"But there are many respectable ants," objected Ben Gile, "and I will
tell you how a well-regulated household behaves. One day last summer,
when I was walking in the afternoon, I found myself suddenly surrounded
by a cloud of winged insects--thousands and thousands of them. I caught
one of them and found that it was a winged ant, for the males and queens
have wings with which to fly away on their wedding journey. This journey
lasts only a short time, and us