A LIVING HONEYCOMB. 825 



portant object : this is to furnish foothold for the clinging feet of 

 certain extraordinary -looking creatures, which form the living honey- 

 combs of which we have spoken. 



Fancy an animal with the head and thorax of a small ant, but with 

 all the posterior portion of the body converted into a round sac, of the 

 size of a large pea, and of a rich translucent amber hue — it being, in 

 fact, distended into a reservoir of honey. This honey-bag is immense 

 when compared with the size of the ant, the unchanged parts of which 

 might pass for a black pin's head attached to the side of a marrowfat 

 pea. These odd-looking creatures cling to the roof of the chamber 

 with their feet, the distended honey-bag hanging downward like an 

 amber globe. On seeing them we instinctively imagine that their leg- 

 muscles must be developed in a fashion to put to shame those of hu- 

 man athletes, since it is no light weight which they are thus forced to 

 continuously support. 



In each chamber of the nest about thirty honey-bearers are found, 

 making some three hundred to the complete nest. Besides these there 

 are hundreds or thousands of others, workers and soldiers, lords and 

 queens, to whom the honey -bearers serve as storehouses of winter 

 food. 



Dr. McCook succeeded in bringing some of these home with him 

 alive, providing them with nest-building materials, and with sugar for 

 nutriment. He has one very interesting nest in a glass bottle, with 

 its interior chamber well displayed. The roof of this is covered with 

 depending globules of honey, so large as almost to conceal the minute 

 clinging insect of which they really form a part. 



But the marvelous feature of the case yet remains to be described. 

 Not only is the abdomen of the ant converted into a receptacle for 

 honey, but the whole internal economy of the body is transformed for 

 this purpose. All the organs of the abdomen have quite disappeared : 

 viscera, nerves, veins, arteries, have alike vanished ; and there remains 

 only a thin, transparent skin, which is capable of great distention. It 

 is thus in reality a honey-cell, and much stranger than that of the bee, 

 the waxen walls of the latter being replaced in this case by the tissues 

 of a living animal. The creature can afford to dispense with the ab- 

 dominal organs, since its life-duties are so metamorphosed that it has 

 henceforth to act only as an animated sweetmeat. 



Dr. McCook's observations enabled him to discover that the work- 

 ing ants, returning from their out-door foraging, with their bodies 

 distended with the honey they have somewhere harvested, enter the 

 chambers of the nest and eject this sweet fluid from their own mouths 

 into the mouths of the honey-bearers, whose bodies become greatly 

 distended with the delicious food. In other cases he perceived hun- 

 gry ants seeking for a meal from the food thus generously stored up. 

 The honey-bearer seemed to slightly contract the muscles of the ab- 

 dominal skin, forcing from its mouth minute globules of honey : these 



