874 [February 



This structure made over the Aphides is not the ants nest, but the prop- 

 erty of the laboring portion of the colony, which are at a short distance in 

 the earth. Against foes, it is guarded in daytime with more attention 

 than soldiers guard the gates of a military city ; and should an ant, even 

 be it of the same species, from a neighboring nest, attempt to visit their 

 "milk cows", it is pounced on and tumbled to the earth. Kirby says : 

 "severe as this constant and unremitted daily labor seems, it is but a small 

 part of what the affection of the working ants leads them readily to under- 

 take. The feeding of the young brood, which rests solely upon them, is a 

 more serious charge. The nest is constantly stored with larvae the year 

 round, during all which time, except in winter when the whole society is 

 torpid, they require feeding several times a day with a viscid half-digested 

 fluid that the workers disgorge into their mouths, which when hungry 

 they stretch out to meet those of their nurses". 



To advance our knowledge of insects is the object of Entomological So- 

 cieties, but in some classes such cannot be perfected without attention to 

 their architecture. Through it European Entomologists have made pro- 

 gress. The London Society possess a Cabinet of Insect Architecture, as 

 is seen from the following,-" Prof. Westwood also exhibited numerous spec- 

 imens of leaves which had been mined by larvfe of Diptera and Lepidop- 

 tera, arranged on card-board for the Cabinet, in such manner as to ex- 

 hibit at a glance the difference between the various mines- a matter of con- 

 siderable importance for the determination of the species". — Atheiiseum, 

 Nov. 1. 1862. 



