ALIEN ASSOCIATES AND AFFINITIES 



soon point out to our farmer that many other living 

 things have possession of his domain whose ancestors 

 were probably here before Columbus, and whose de- 

 scendants will doubtless outlive the Republic. These 

 are the creatures with which ants have to neighbor. 



Close neighbors they are at times; sometimes hostile, 

 sometimes indifferent, sometimes friendly. In the course 

 of ages of neighboring experience, strange inter-relation- 

 ships have been established, presenting some of the most 

 interesting and puzzling features of emmet communal 

 life. To a few of these our attention will now be turned. 



Taking up once more our mountain mound-builders, 

 we note certain loose relationships established between 

 them and some other insects in cold weather. Winter 

 deadens energy and subdues combativeness, and, when 

 severe, suspends activities. One will then come across 

 colonies of our common white ant (Termes flavipes) im- 

 bedded within the great cones of Formica exsectoides 

 Bunches of cockroaches are found, and sundry beetles, 

 with other insects, that in the adult or larval stage nat- 

 urally domicile in the ground. 



Most of this sort of neighboring is the result of that 

 truce which Jack Frost enforces, and will largely dis- 

 appear when spring relaxes nature and insects come to 

 their normal antagonisms. But it shows how certain 

 companionships may have been formed which, at first 

 accidental and temporary, were found to be harmless, 

 more or less helpful, and in some cases highly beneficial. 

 Use and heredity, operating upon casual affinities and 

 the acquisition of a common nest-odor, may have thus 

 brought about those examples of symbiosis, or sym- 

 pathetic companionship, which exist among ants, and 

 between them and other creatures. 



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