238 THE BIOLOGY OF INSECTS 



suffer interruption of their innervation, and undergo a 

 solvent action by ferments present in the blood. 



Among ants generally a new community arises, as 

 among social wasps and bumble-bees, by a young queen 

 starting a new nest, and herself doing all necessary work, 

 rearing the grubs and feeding them with her own spittle, 

 as she does not leave the nest until the first brood of workers 

 are developed ; then these take on the labours of the society. 

 In some cases, however, daughter- queens may return, after 

 the nuptial flight, to their native nest which thus comes to 

 harbour a number of fertile females all helping to increase 

 the size of the family. Again such a many-mothered 

 (polygynic) society may give oif colonies consisting of 

 young queens " each accompanied by a detachment of 

 workers." The variety of method shown by ants in pro- 

 ducing new family societies is of great interest, suggesting 

 that their behaviour is more plastic and less stereotyped than 

 that of most other social insects. 



The wingless condition of the worker-ants is correlated 

 with their prevalent habit of nesting in the soil ; the vast 

 majority of members of this family may be reckoned among 

 those insects which have abandoned aerial life for an exist- 

 ence mainly terrestrial. With this mode of life are associated 

 many adaptations of structure well known to observers at 

 all familiar with the aspect of worker-ants. Their eyes are 

 usually small, while their elongate feelers well provided 

 with tactile and olfactory sense-organs are in constant use. 

 Their long slender legs are well suited for the rapid running 

 which goes far to compensate for the loss of flight. Wheeler 

 dwells on the *' very long and intimate contact with the 

 soil " which " has made the ants singularly plastic in their 

 nesting habits," while A. Espinas (1877) pointed out that 

 the loss of the power of flight among worker-ants is not 

 without compensation in the increased intelligence partly at 

 least attributable to their terrestrial life. " On the earth 

 . . . there is not a movement that is not a contact and does 

 not yield precise information, not a journey that fails to 

 leave some reminiscence." 



