They swarm as the bees do. As they rise high from the earth, they drift off on the wind. Very many of them tire out and die, or are blown into the water, and are drowned. A few live and settle on places fit for a new ant-hill. It is the mother or queen ant who chooses the new home. When she has found the right place, what do you think she does? She takes off her wings, as she does not care to fly any more. The ant does not tear off her wings. She unhooks them, and lets them fall away, and does not seem to miss them. FOOTNOTES: [3] When we mean only one we say _larva_; when we mean more than one we say _larvæ_. LESSON III. THE ANT’S HOME. Ants live in nests, made in the earth. We call them ant-hills, from the shape of the part that is above ground. It is the queen ant who begins to build the ant-hill. [Illustration: The New Home.] Like the mother wasp, the ant works on her nest until enough ants grow up to do all the work. After that, like the queen bee, she does no work. The work ants will not allow her to go from home.[4] [Illustration: Sappers and Miners.] When the ant finds a place for her home, how does she take off her wings? They would be in her way while she worked. She presses the edge of a wing upon the ground and so pushes it up and loosens the hook, just as you unhook a dress. Then she begins to dig. She acts at first much as your dog does when he digs after a chipmunk or a rabbit. The ant lays her big head close to the ground. With her fore-feet she digs up the soil, and tosses it back between her hind legs. She digs as her cousin, Mrs. Wasp, digs. [Illustration: Sappers and Miners.] She keeps waving her little feelers, as if to find out the kind of soil. Soon she has a hole deep enough to cover her body. It is too deep for her to throw out the dirt with her feet. Now she uses her feet, and her jaws, also, to dig with. Where the soil is sandy, she takes it out, grain by grain. At first, she must back out of her hole. Soon her hall-way is so wide that she can turn about after she has backed a few steps. Ants are very kind to each other in their work. If they push or tread on each other in their haste, they never fight about it. The ants know how to work and how to rest. After a little hard work they stop, clean their bodies, take some food, and sleep. As the making of the hall goes on, the ants bite off with their jaws bits of dirt, and roll them up with their feet. They soon use the hind part of the body to press and push the earth into a firm ball. These balls are carried out and laid by the door. By degrees the balls form the “ant-hill.” When the hall is two or three inches long, they make a room. Then they make more halls and more rooms. The rooms are for eggs, for larvæ, for pupæ,[5] and for food. People who have studied much about ants have had them build nests in glass jars. Thus they have been able to see how they work.