THE ANT-COLONY AS AN ORGANISM ole 
nomadic driver and legionary ants are almost continually moving 
from place to place and must cover a considerable territory during 
the year. After the queen has selected the nesting site, she im- 
mures herself in some earthen or vegetable cavity, lays a number 
of eggs, supplying them with yolk derived by metabolism from 
her fat-body and now useless wing-muscles, and feeds the hatch- 
ing larve on her salivary secretion, which, though highly nutri- 
tious, is, nevertheless, very limited in quantity, so that the off- 
spring when mature are dwarfed and very few in number. They 
are in fact, workers of the smallest and feeblest caste; but they set 
to work enlarging the nest, break through the soil or plant tissues, 
construct an entrance on the surface and seek food for themselves 
and their famished mother. This food enables her to replenish her 
fat-body and to produce more eggs. Her expansive instincts 
and activities now contract, so to speak, and become reduced 
henceforth to a perpetual routine of assimilation, metabolism 
and oviposition. She produces brood after brood during her long 
life which may extend over a period of ten to thirteen years. Her 
workers assume the duties of foraging, of feeding the larve and 
one another, and of completing the nest. Their size and poly- 
morphism increase with successive broods, till the soldier forms, 
if these are characteristic of the species, make their appearance. 
Then the individuals which correspond to the reproductive cells 
of the personal organism, namely, the virgin males and females 
develop, and the colonial organism may be said to have reached 
maturity. Like the personal organism, it may persist for thirty 
or forty years-or,, perhaps, even longer without much growth of 
its soma, since the workers and soldiers of which this consists are 
exposed to many vicissitudes and live only from three to four 
years and probably, as a rule, for a much shorter period. If 
the queen grow too old or die the colony, as a rule, dwindles and 
eventually perishes unless her place is taken by one or more of 
her fertile daughters. 
This is the ontogenetic history of most ant-colonies. It is so 
similar to the phylogenetic history derived from the sources men- 
tioned above that we have no hesitation in affirming that it con- 
forms in the most striking manner to the biogenetic law. The 
