1 86 The Book of Bugs. 



morn they go on a wedding journey. The males fall to 

 the ground and the birds get them. The females come 

 back home, tear off their wings, and start in to lay thirty- 

 five or forty worker eggs. These workers are unde- 

 veloped females, who sometimes lay eggs without love, 

 courtship, or marriage. The worst of it is that their 

 children always turn out to be boys. The queens live 

 together without quarreling and do nothing but lay eggs. 

 Once in a while they may take a walk out of doors, but 

 always with a bodyguard of workers attending. It is 

 easy to see how the nest increases in population until it 

 has been estimated that some settlements of F. cxscctoidcs 

 in the Alleghanies contain between 200,000,000 and 

 400,000,000 inhabitants, all living in peaceable relations 

 with each other, all hostile unto death to any intruder 

 even of the same species from another nest. 



Now, then, how do they know who's who? Mr. Darwin 

 has well said that an ant's brain is the most wonderful 

 atom of matter in the world, but even so, it cannot be that 

 each ant can remember every one of 200,000,000 fellow- 

 laborers. Keep an ant a year and a half out of its own 

 nest and when it is put back it is recognized as a friend. 

 Sir John Lubbock divided a nest of fusccc in the spring 

 before there were any eggs. When they had been laid, 

 had hatched into the cornucopia-shaped grubs, sorted by 

 the workers into classes according to their age and size, 

 comically like a graded school ; had been promoted into 

 the grammar grade of cocoons and had graduated into 

 mature ants, the divided house was reunited. The old 

 folks at home that had not seen even the eggs of these 

 young ones were civil to them and asked them how they 

 did, and if they didn't think it was nice weather they were 

 having. It was thought that maybe the nursing ants 

 had given the younger ones the password, but when eggs 



