ROBLEM OF COMMUNAL DEPENDENTS 



We note the agitation that follows in the trail of the 

 ministering ants as they push their way from point to 

 point, until their exhausted supply warns them to retire 

 from the scene. 



What other pleasures than those of appetite are open 

 to these winged dependents? The pleasure of work is 

 denied them by nature. The natural history of social 

 insects gives no examples of more absolute idlers than 

 they. Does time hang heavy as they plunge through 

 the galleries, jostled by the miners and builders, who pay 

 little heed to them as thev run to and fro with their 



/ 



burdens? In the domed chambers wherein they con- 

 gregate, and the swelling bays that relieve the strain of 

 traffic upon the galleries and gangways, they huddle and 

 preen their coats and sleep, and in some species, perhaps, 

 pay and receive sexual court. What other activities 

 engage their attention in this listless life, in the midst 

 of their strenuous supporters, it were vain further to 

 conjecture. Future observers may have something more 

 to tell. 



Such a subterranean career is, from our standpoint, 

 passed in darkness. But we are not to conclude that 

 the same or even an analogous condition exists for our 

 emmet cave-dwellers. There may reach them vibratory 

 remnants of light-rays, in measure and quality quite 

 beyond human appreciation, but which suffice for ants. 

 Moreover, those remarkable olfactory organs, the an- 

 tenna 1 , are so extended and flexible, so sensitive and so 

 capable of conveying a knowledge of environing condi- 

 tions and relations, that they may easily supplement or 

 even supply the seeming deficiency of light. 



Be that as it mav, the writer, after the most careful 



\, ' 



attention of which he is capable, has never been able to 



185 



