826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



clung to the hairs of the under lip, and were eagerly lapped up by the 

 hungry ants waiting to be fed. It is probable, however, that these 

 supplies are principally intended as winter stores for the workers, for 

 the feeding of the larvre, and for the dinner-table of the queen, who 

 is, as usual, too proud or too dignified to do her own foraging. 



The working ants take great care of their helpless honey-bearers. 

 When one, through some convulsion of nature — occasioned perhaps 

 by the tap of a gigantic human finger — looses its hold and drops to 

 the floor of its chamber, it is at once picked up by a worker, and car- 

 ried back to its old foothold on the roof of the apartment. How this 

 minute creature can drag up a perpendicular wall a mass twenty times 

 its own size and weight is only less surprising than it would be to see 

 an adroit climber of the human race ascending the face of a precipice 

 and pulling after him a ton weight. 



With regard to the source of the honey, these ants are not known 

 to feast on flowers, like bees and some of our home ants, nor could 

 any evidence be found of the presence of the Aphis, or ant-cow, which 

 many of our ants milk for its honey. 



The honey-gatherer is difiicult to observe. It is a nocturnal ant, 

 keeping out of sight of the sun during the day, and only venturing 

 forth at nightfall in search of food. Dr. McCook observed them, in 

 the summer twilight, marching outward from the nest in long col- 

 umns, and pursuing night after night the same paths. He watched 

 them for a considerable time before he succeeded in finding the goal 

 of these nightly expeditions. At length, discovering some ants on the 

 twigs of a species of scrub-oak, which grew abundantly at the foot 

 of the ridge, he observed that they showed a marked preference for 

 certain small oak-galls which were ranged along the sides of the 

 twigs. 



The next thing to be done was to examine these galls. We are 

 accustomed to associate galls with the idea of bitterness only, yet they 

 proved to be the true honey-yielders. On the round, green masses 

 minute drops of a sweet juice were found : this the ants eagerly licked 

 up, passing from gall to gall until fully laden, or returning to the 

 original gall at a later hour when fresh sweetness had exuded from it. 



The gall-nut, it is well known, is an excrescence upon the leaves 

 of a species of oak ; it is produced by the puncture of a small hymen- 

 opterous insect for the purpose of depositing its eggs. A minute 

 grub lies in the center of the soft mass which composes the gall. 

 Whether the sweet juice came from this grub, or from the sap of the 

 tree, was not readily to be discovered, though it was most likely an 

 exudation of the sap. 



All night the busy gatherers of sweets were occupied in collecting 

 honey from the galls. Toward morning they were seen in great num- 

 bers returning to the nest, their bodies swollen with the night's har- 

 vest of honey, which, as we have said, is given to the living honey- 



