[12] In the world of science, the ant goes by her Latin name, _Formica_, and the whole family is known as the _Formicidæ_. To a Roman boy _Formica_ simply meant "ant." _Fusca_ is also Latin, and means "dark"; so you can see this part of the story is about a species of dark ant. As a matter of fact he is dark brown. [Illustration: THE DESERTED VILLAGE UNDER THE STONE If Oliver Goldsmith had been as much interested in ants as was the French "Homer of the insect," Henri Fabre, he might have written of another kind of "Deserted Village," its "desert walks" and its "mouldering walls." This is a deserted village of ants. The little citizens that built it lived under a stone. When the stone was lifted it took the entire roof off the place.] THE ANT WHO DIDN'T KNOW HIS TRADE As you may suppose, this is real architectural engineering and no place for amateurs. I once saw a foolish worker starting a roof from the top of one of the side walls without paying any attention to the fact that the other wall was much higher. The result was he struck the middle of it, instead of joining it at the top. Another ant passing, possibly the supervising architect, saw what was going to happen. So what does he do but stop and tear down the other's work and build the ceiling over again! "There! _That's_ the way to put in a ceiling," he seemed to say. "For goodness sake, where _did_ you learn your trade?" Huber, the famous student of ants, saw two of these wonderful insects do the very same thing. Sometimes the situation is such that it is necessary to build a very wide ceiling, so wide that it would fall of its own weight unless supported in some way. Then what would you do; that is, if _you_ were an ant? "Why, I'd put up pillars to hold it." That's exactly what the ants do; they put up pillars; but instead of using steel beams, as men do in this day of steel, the ant architects make pillars of clay--build them up with pellets, little clay bricks which they shape with their mandibles--their jaws. But the ants seem to have some of the methods of steel construction, too; the use of girders and things. Ebrard, a French student of ants, tells how, when a certain roof threatened to fall, some Sir Christopher Wren of the ant world used a blade of grass as a girder, just as Sir Christopher in his day put in girders to support the roof of Saint Paul's Cathedral, and as men use steel girders to-day. The ant fastened a little mass of earth on the end of a grass stalk growing near to bend it over; then gnawed it a little at the bottom to make it bend still more, and finally fixed it with mud pellets into the roof. But here's something that will make you smile! You have heard about the lazy man down in Arkansas with the hole in his roof? You remember he never mended it in dry weather because it didn't need it, and when it rained he _couldn't_ mend it on account of the rain! RAINY-DAY WORK IN THE ANT WORLD