THE ANTS OR PISMIRES 



The food-gatherers collect either the seeds of various 

 plants, or nectar from flowers, or the liquid excreta of aphides 

 and scale insects. Some of them combine such collection with 

 hunting, but others, such as the harvesting ants, live entirely 

 on seeds, especially of grasses. In the harvesters the large- 

 headed soldiers act as seed-crushers for the colony. The large 

 head contains the very powerful muscles which work the 

 mandibles. 



The most highly developed agriculturists are the leaf- 

 cutting ants. They subsist entirely on a special kind of fungus 

 grown on the fragments of leaves which they carry into 

 underground chambers. The queen of these ants takes a 

 little pellet of the fungus with her on her marriage-flight, 

 so that the food is passed on to each new nest. 



Some of the ants which feed on the excreta of aphides can 

 also be classed as agriculturists. The common yellow ant, 

 Lasius flavus, which makes mounds in fields, obtains almost 

 all its food from, aphides living on the roots of plants in 

 underground chambers in or near the nest. These might well 

 be compared to herds of cattle, except that we do not yet 

 know how far the ants manage them in the way in which 

 man does his domesticated animals. 



Some of both the food-gatherers and the agriculturists 

 have the sting greatly reduced, and in their attacks on their 

 enemies squirt the poison instead of injecting it with a stylet. 

 It is not clear what they have gained by the change, though 

 some of the most common and successful species retain the 

 sting only in a rudimentary form. 



We may now consider in more detail the three main ways 

 by which ants feed themselves. A great many ants subsist 

 partly by hunting, as even civilised man does to a limited 

 extent — by fishing, for instance. The wood ant, which often 

 makes large mounds in pine-woods, brings in large quantities 



"3 



