824 '^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A LIVING HONEYCOMB. 



MUCH as has been written, about the marvels of instinct, there 

 are still discoveries of great interest to be made in this pro- 

 lific field. Particularly in the domain of those insect Yankees, the 

 ants, with their wonderful ingenuity and human-like manners and cus- 

 toms, there is room for extended observations. 



Some lately discovered facts in relation to them are so curious and 

 interesting that it may be advisable to give them greater publicity 

 than they have yet obtained. Some of these facts have long been 

 known to the world of science, but not to the public. Others are new 

 discoveries. As a whole they form one of the most surprising chap- 

 ters in the history of animal life and contrivance. 



Varied as are the social habits of the ants, it is generally consid- 

 ered that social bees surpass them in one particular, namely, their 

 mode of storing supplies of winter food, the storehouses of ant-food 

 having no contrivance similar in ingenuity to the honeycomb, with its 

 rich supply of the sweets of life. 



But the truth is that certain tribes of ants are well aware of the 

 value of nature's sweetmeats as articles of food, and have developed a 

 mode of storing up their winter honey still more curious than that 

 practiced by the bees. They possess, in fact, what may be called liv- 

 ing honeycombs ; perambulatory cells filled with distilled sweetness. 

 We refer to the honey-bearing ants of New Mexico, concerning which 

 some very interesting facts have been brought to light during the past 

 summer. 



The Rev. Dr. McCook, of Philadelphia, a noted observer of ants 

 and ant-life, has been interviewing these honey-bearers, and his results 

 differ so widely from the ordinary facts of insect instinct that they 

 can not but prove of general interest. These ants had been previously 

 known only in New Mexico, but he discovered them in Colorado, in- 

 habiting the locality known as the " Garden of the Gods," their nests 

 being excavated in the stony crests of low ridges which run through 

 this mountain-gii't paradise. 



The ridges are composed of a friable sandstone, into which our 

 minute masons mine deeply, digging galleries which sometimes run 

 for several feet into the rock. The nest, outwardly, is some ten inches 

 in diameter by from two to three and a half inches in height, composed 

 of sand and bits of stone carried from within, some of which seem 

 large enough to defy a regiment of ants to move them. 



Inside the nests successive chambers are excavated, connected by 

 galleries, the floors of the chambers being comparatively smooth, while 

 the ceilings are left in a rough state. But this roughness is no evi- 

 dence of carelessness in the builder. It has, on the contrary, an im- 



