ANT COMMUNITIES 



supplies for current sustenance, as well as for their 

 peculiar mode of providing for future wants. [McC. 

 v, p. 17 sq.] 



Among the honey-ants the workers, though varying in 

 size, are structurally alike (Fig. r>3). Yet certain indi- 

 viduals, quite independent of caste, and following an 

 impulse unknown, but apparently fixed in the germ and 



^ 



Fig. 53 THE DIGESTIVE TRACT OF A HONEY-ANT 



Showing asophagus, a, as a nearly straight tube from the mouth 

 to the abdomen, c Crop, gz Gizzard, s Stomach 



early manifest in the callows, begin to store up food in 

 their crops, and thus develop into rotunds or honey- 

 bearers (Fig. 54). It must be allowed to be a curious 

 manifestation of communal philomyrmicry which causes 

 one of the most active of creatures to become little more 

 than an animated honey-pot, that the food supply of its 

 fellow-formicans may not lapse. But so we find it; and, 

 after all, it is little more than a development to its cli- 

 max of an instinct that urges ants of other species to 

 charge their crops with an excess of food in order to 

 impart it to the commune dependents. 



The insectivorous habit of ants has been utilized as a 

 check upon the increase of certain destructive cater- 

 pillars. The author's attention was called to an article 

 on the "Utilization of Ants as Grub-Destroyers in China," 



by Doctor Magowan, of Wenchow, and this led him to con- 



110 



