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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig. 3 Eggs and Fungus Garden in 

 Cell of Queen Atta sexdens Forty- 

 Eight HOUKS AFTER THE NUPTIAL 



Flight. (After J. Huber.) 



Fig. 4. Eggs and Fungus Garden in 

 Cell of Queen Atta sexdens Seventy- 

 two Hours after the Nuptial Flight. 

 (After J. Huber.) 



Fig. 5. Silhouette of a Queen Atta 

 sexdens in the Act of Manuring her 

 Fungus Garden. A tuft of fungus my- 

 celium is torn out of the garden, placed 

 against the anus and saturated with a 

 drop of fecal liquid. (From an instan- 

 taneous photograph, alter J. Huber.) 



and sensitive to the light that she hastens to conceal herself on the 

 slightest disturbance to the nest. She becomes utterly indifferent to the 

 young, leaving them entirely to the care of the workers, while she limits 

 her activities to laying eggs and imbibing liquid food from the tongues 

 of her attendants. This copious nourishment soon restores her depleted 



fat-body, but her disappearing wing- 

 muscles have left her thoracic cavity 

 hollow and filled with gases which 

 cause her to float when placed in 

 water. With this circumscribed 

 activity she lives on, sometimes to 

 an age of fifteen years, as a mere 

 egg-laying machine. The current 

 reputation of the ant queen is de- 

 rived from such old, abraded, tooth- 

 less, timorous queens found in well- 

 established colonies. But it is 

 neither chivalrous nor scientific to 

 dwell exclusively on the limitations 

 of these decrepit beldames without 

 calling to mind the charms and self- 

 sacrifices of their younger days. 



Now to bring up a family of even 

 very small children without eating 

 anything and entirely on substances 

 abstracted from one's own tissues is 

 no trivial undertaking. Of the many 

 thousands of ant queens annually 

 impelled to enter on this ultra-strenu- 

 ous life, very few survive to become 

 mothers of colonies. The vast majority, after starting their shallow 

 burrows, perish through excessive drought, moisture or cold, the attacks 

 of parasitic fungi or subterranean insects, or start out with an inade- 



Fig. (3. Silhouette of a Queen Atta 

 sexdens replacing the Saturated Tuft 

 of Mycelium in the Fungus Garden. 

 (From an instantaneous photograph, 

 alter I. Huber.) 



