Wasps, Bees, and Ants 539 



of knowing the exact facts with regard to this matter will be appreciated 

 when the reader comes to the later discussion of the probable origin of the 

 various castes in the communal insect species. The adult ants feed on a 

 variety of substances, both animal and vegetable, almost all, however, having 

 a special taste for sweetish liquids, such as the secreted honey-dew of plant- 

 lice, scale-insects, certain small beetles and others, and the sugary sap of cer- 

 tain trees. The males and fertile females are fed by the workers. 



Besides feeding the larva?, the nurses have to see that the young enjoy 

 suitable temperature and humidity of the atmosphere; this is accomplished 

 by moving the larvae or pupae from room to room, farther below the sur- 

 face, up nearer the surface, or even out into the warm sunshine above 

 ground. The carrying about of ants' "eggs," which are not eggs but 

 usually the cocooned pupae, by the workers, is a familiar sight around any 

 ant-nest, particularly a disturbed one. The various special industries under- 

 taken by ants, as the attendance on and care of honey-dew-secreting plant- 

 lice, the fungus-growing in their nests, the harvesting (but not planting!) 

 of food-seeds, the waging of wars for pillage or slave-making, the long migra- 

 tions, etc., etc., all more or less familiar through much true and some inaccu- 

 rate popular writing, will be referred to in what detail our space permits in 

 the later descriptions of the life of certain interesting species of American 

 ants. 



In any community there may live at one time several (two to thirty) 

 queens with wings removed. In small colonies there is, however, usually 

 but one. As already mentioned, winged ants are to be seen only at certain 

 times in the year. When a brood of sexual individuals (males and females) 

 is matured in the community, these winged forms issue on a sudden impulse 

 (comparable in a way with the outwinging ecstasy of bees at swarming- 

 time) from all the openings of the nest and take wing. The air may be 

 swarming with them, flights from neighboring nests intermingling and joining. 

 This is the mating flight, and after it is over and tho.se ants which have 

 escaped the bird attacks and other dangers attending this bold essay into the 

 outer world alight or fall exhausted to the ground, the males soon die, wliile 

 the females pull the wings from the body and get under cover. In the com- 

 munal nest, therefore, winged ants are rarely found. The life of the workers 

 of most ant species is con.spicuously longer than that of other social insect 

 workers: they live for from one to three or four or even five years. Lub- 

 bock has kept workers until six years old, and queens until seven. The 

 males all die j'oung, but both other kinds of individuals are exceptionally 

 long-lived for insects. 



About two hundred species of North American ants constituting the 

 superfamily Formicina or Formicoidea are comprised in three principal 

 families. Some authors recognize five or six families, but it is doubtful if 



