1905.] Wheeler, The Ants of New Jersey. 395 



the eggs of the corn root aphis are preserved and cared for. Here 

 also considerable collections of the worker ants are usually found, — • 

 especially in winter and in times of summer drouth, — and in these 

 chambers the female resides and lays her eggs. 



"The fact has already been mentioned in this paper that the 

 sexual egg-laying generation of the corn root aphis — the last to 

 appear in fall — is born in the galleries of the nests or homes of the 

 ants, and that here the sexes pair and the females drop their eggs. 

 As one explores these nests in November, when the root louse eggs are 

 being laid, he is struck with the relative independence of these ovip- 

 arous adults, which are allowed to wander unattended through the 

 burrows of their hosts as far as a foot or more from a corn root. We 

 have found them, however, still feeding as late as November 5, and 

 laying eggs November 21. These eggs, which are yellow when first 

 deposited, but soon become shining black, and turn green just before 

 hatching, are at first scattered here and there, as it happens, but are 

 finally gathered by the ants for the winter in little heaps and stored 

 in their galleries, or sometimes in chambers made by widening the 

 galleries as if for storage purposes. If a nest is disturbed, the ants 

 will commonly seize the aphis eggs — often several at a grasp — and 

 carry them away. In winter they are taken to the deepest parts of 

 the nest (six or seven inches below the surface in some cases ob- 

 served) as if for some partial protection against frost; but on bright 

 days in spring they are brought up, sometimes within half an inch or 

 less of the surface, sometimes even scattered about in the sunshine, 

 and carried back again at night — a practice probably to be under- 

 stood as a means of hastening their hatching. I have repeatedly 

 seen these ants in confinement with a little mass of aphis eggs, turn 

 the eggs about one by one with their mandibles, licking each carefully 

 at the same time as if to clean the surface. These anxious cares are 

 of course explained by the use the ants make of the root lice, whose 

 excreted fltiids they lap up greedily as soon as the young lice begin to 

 feed. They are not, however, wholly dependent on this food supply, 

 at least in early spring, as I have seen them kill and drag away at that 

 season soft-bodied insect larvse, doubtless to suck their juices out as 

 food. . . . 



"That the young of the first generation are helped by the ants to 

 a favorable position on the roots of the plants they infest is quite 

 beyond question. It is shown (i) by the fact that in many cases the 

 aphis could not get access to such roots unless these had been 

 previously laid bare by the tunneling of the ants, and (2) by the 



