PROBLEM OF COMMUNAL DEPENDENTS 



Thus the vast interval between the present and the 

 Tertiary eras is bridged by a continuity of habit which 

 joins in substantial unity of social behavior the ants of 

 to-day with those of far geological antiquity. In 

 harmony with this is the statement that all of the eight 

 hundred specimens secured belong to extinct and un- 

 described species, and are wonderfully like existing 

 forms. It is substantially the same story that one reads 

 in the even better preserved ant forms of the fossil 

 amber of Europe. The Formica fusca of the Baltic 

 amber, for example, appears to be entirely identical 

 with that of the present. Much the same general con- 

 clusion arises from a study of the fossil spiders. 1 



In every such case as the fossilizing of the Florissant 

 ants and the swarms of Lonesome Lake, the innumer- 

 able hosts of insects massed within a comparatively 

 limited field must have come from a great number of 

 nests dispersed throughout the general locality. We 

 may conclude that the cycle of maturity was completed 

 simultaneously in all these communities, and that 

 similar favorable conditions united to induce con- 

 temporaneous flight. The intermingling of the various 

 individual swarms, as they were borne along by the wind, 

 sufficiently accounts for the extraordinary massing of 

 winged creatures which were swept over and into the 

 White Mountain lakes. This will not wholly explain the 

 phenomena; for the virgin queens and their male 

 partners, in full maturity, have often been seen to be 

 inhabitants of the commune for a considerable period 

 before marriage-flight. Evidently they are prepared 

 for the exit long before it comes, and await therefor 



1 See author's American Spiders and Their Spinning-Work, vol. ii, 

 chap, xv, " Ancestral Spiders and Their Habits." 



177 



