HY.MENOPTERA. 633 



bee, building a nest, and when the owner of the nest is off 

 collecting provisions steals in and lays its egg, which the 

 unconscious owner walls in with her own egg. Sometimes 

 the cuckoo-fly larva eats the rightful occupant of the nest, 

 and sometimes starves it by eating up the food provided for 

 it. The bees and wasps know this foe very well, and tender 

 it so warm a reception that the brilliant-coated little rascal 

 has reason enough to double itself up so that the righteous 

 sting of its assailant can find no hole in its armor. There 

 is one instance on record where an outraged wasp, unable 

 to sting one of the cuckoo-flies to death, gnawed off her 

 wings and pitched her out on the ground. But the un- 

 daunted invader waited until the wasp departed for provi- 

 sions, and then crawled up the post and laid her egg in the 

 nest before she died. 



Some of the cuckoo-flies are true parasites ; one of them 

 infests the currant-worm in Europe. It is to be hoped that 

 this species will find its way to this country. 



Superfamily FORMICINA (For-mi-ci'na). 



TJic Ants. 



The ants are easily recognized by the well-known form 

 of the body. The only insects that are liable to be mis- 

 taken for ants are the white-ants or Termites (Tennitidce] 

 and the velvet-ants (MutillidcK). But the true ants are 

 readily distinguished from these and other insects by the 

 form of the abdomen. With the ants the first segment of 

 the abdomen, and in one family the second also, forms a 

 lens-shaped scale or knot, varying in form and 

 serving as a peduncle to the remaining por- 

 tion of this region of the body (Fig. 764). FIG. 7 6 4 . 

 The winged ants are also peculiar in lacking the cup-like 

 scale or tegula at the base of each fore wing. 



If the statesman or the philosopher would study a per- 

 fect communistic society, let him throw away his histories 



