NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 103 



auts, carefully and gently walking through the ranks of the sap-sucking pests ; 

 busily engaged in licking up the honey dew, which is nothing more than the 

 transparent excrementitious fluid, that is momentarily dropping from the 

 countless aphides. To facilitate the process of collecting these precious 

 sweet drops, the ant caressingly applies its antennae to the bloated sides of 

 tae plant louse, who obligingly turns up his tail and delivers the sweet little 

 transparent drop, which is thankfully received and licked up by the polite 

 little teaser. From observations on this peculiarity in the character of the 

 erratic ant, have originated the occasional accounts we have seen published 

 in the newspapers about the ant's milk cows. As far as my observation goes, 

 the erratic ant is the only one of the genus that visits and collects the excre- 

 mentitious droppings of the aphis. 



Besides the great quantities of food collected from the aphis, or plant lice, 

 by these courageous and extremely industrious little creatures, the oakfamily 

 of trees affords them large supplies. The post oak {Quercua obtusiloba) and 

 the black-jack (Quercus nigra) particularly. They will travel a long distance 

 from home to visit a thrifty-growing tree of either of these oaks. And. as 

 these trees yield their supplies all the time of the green foliage, they generally 

 establish a chain of depots along the line of travel, from their nearest city to 

 the food-giving tree. Or it may be, that finding the selected tree capable of 

 supplying food for great numbers, they have, instead of depots, extended 

 their cities along the range of the great thoroughfare, and thus, by the addition 

 of city after city, strengthen the confederacy, and increase the faciliities for 

 procuring provisions for their great and extended realm. 



This is no fiction, or fancy sketch, in the history of the contrivances of these 

 thoughtful little emmets. It is sometimes a hundred yards or more from the 

 mother hive, or city, to the tree that their commissaries have selected ; and at 

 various distances along the road, they do erect new establishments, at first, 

 thinly scattered on the route, which are, however, seen to increase annually 

 all the way to the tree, if it remains alive, and these are either depots, 

 places of deposit for their surplus accumulations of their stores of provisions, 

 or they are confederated communities. Be it either way, the fact that they 

 are carrying on a well-regulated and thoroughly-understood system of 

 friendly, reciprocal intercourse cannot be denied ; that is, as far as any one 

 line of depots, or cities, as I prefer to call them, are concerned. 



Coming across any one of their great thoroughfares we find them streaming 

 along in both directions. Take either end of this road, and you may trace 

 it to its terminus. It may be some distance, but you will find it if you per- 

 severe, either in a terminal city, or a live tree ; and that it is not connected 

 with any other range of cities, (I prefer the term cities), which, as I think, 

 further and more careful investigation will decide these peculiar ranges of 

 ant nests to be. 



In large towns and cities constructed by the human species, where they 

 have cut down and destroyed the forests, these sagacious little ants would have 

 to evacuate such places, if they possessed no reasoning powers to enable 

 them to adapt themselves to other conditions and circumstances. The ant 

 finds that the march of civilization has crushed out and destroyed all his 

 resources for subsistence ; and viewing arrogant man as the prime cause 

 of this great loss, he quickly decides to hold him accountable, and force him 

 to make good the damage. To effectuate this grand retaliative resolve, he forth- 

 with transports his eggs and young ones, with their nurses and teachers into 

 the intruder's kitchen, into the little crannies arid cracks, in the timbers about 

 the dairy and dining apartment, and particularly beneath the hearths in the 

 dwelling. In these newly-established homes they become more thrifty than 

 they were while in a natural state. Finding provisions abundant and very 

 convenient, they are encouraged to labor more, and they increase at a ratio 

 unprecedented. Soon their numbers are so great that they are to be seen in 



1866.] 



