178 Transactions. — Zoolo<jy. 



black croalures thai had come out thoy assiiuilated in appear- 

 ance to the larviu I had seen devouring the IccnjiC. 



In looking for the ladybh-ds I could not help observiui; 

 that the wattle-trees were completely cnevrun with ants — 

 small black ants, similar in appearance to what are abundant 

 in England. 1 had long known how fond ants are of honey- 

 dew, and I surmised at once that they were after the honey- 

 dew of the Iccriuc. I watched them smoothing the Iccri/ic with 

 their antenna^ : this may be a way of stimulating the How of 

 the honey-dew . 1 further observed, to my astonishment, that 

 the ants had built umuerous nests, which I shall hereafter call 

 stables, over portions of the trunks of the wattles : these were; 

 composed of the semi-decayed tine ueedle-like leaves of the 

 wattle, and rubbish otT the groinul. looselv stuck together with 

 the exuded gum from the wattle itself. The least crack in 

 the bark of a wattle, such as might be caused by its natural 

 expansion, will be followed by a gum-like extidation, and this 

 is made use of by the ants to cement their stables. It is quite 

 possible that the ants may purposely wound the wattle. A 

 great many of these stables were empty {i.e., there were no 

 living creatures inside), but lots of them were teeming with 

 ants, and also contained a variable number — from live to thirty 

 or more — of Iccri/(C, adherent by their probosces to the bark in 

 the usual way. but with ver^- little cottony exudation, and 

 never any eggs (at least, on all that I examined). My deduc- 

 tions from these observations are — 



1. Ants are very fond of the honey-dew of the Icen/a pnr- 

 diasi. 



"2. They very probably obtain it from them by a voluntary 

 effort on the part of the ant. 



3. By pemiing them up in these stables that I have de- 

 scribed, they prevent the access of the winged male, so that 

 the whole of the food of the Iccn/a goes to the prodtiction of 

 lionej'-dew, instead of the formation of eggs, so that the nuilti- 

 plication of the creature is greatly lessened, while its individual 

 life may not improbably be prolonged. 



4. The deserted stables I found were those in which all 

 the Iccri/(V had expired. 



5. Probably the ants had their real germinating nests in the 

 ground, only using these stables for food-supply. 



I have lately ascertained that the ladybird is a species of 

 CoccineUa. 



