NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



nent feature of the ant economy. The fact is, in some 

 genera, the workers have also remarkable differences in 

 structure, as of the head, for example, in Pheidole and 

 Pogonomyrmex. This appears to show that differentia- 

 tion into castes is regulated by something other than 

 the food supply. 



Females of Camponotus, when fertilized, go solitary, 

 and after dispossessing themselves of their wings, begin 

 the work of founding a new family in some convenient 

 bit of dead or living timber. This work they carry on 

 until enough workers are reared to attend to the active 

 duties of the formicary, such as procuring food, tending 

 and feeding the young, and enlarging the domicile. 

 After that, the queens generally limit their duty to the 

 laying of eggs. 



A series of valuable observations was made upon an 

 ant queen by Mr. Edward Potts, a member of the Phil- 

 adelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, in accordance 

 with the author's suggestions and directions. The ant 

 was afterwards taken into the author's possession and 

 many of the observations were confirmed. June 16th, 

 Mr. Potts captured a carpenter queen (C. pennsylva- 

 nicus) running across a house-room floor, late at night. 

 He placed it in a bottle, but forgot to examine it until 

 five days later. The ant was then alive, and had laid 

 six or eight eggs in the otherwise empty bottle. These 

 eggs, in their various stages of development, she contin- 

 ued to attend for about fifty days. A pinch of white 

 sugar, moistened every evening with a drop or two of 

 water, was the food supplied. At feeding-time, the 

 mother would quit her otherwise unremitting watch 

 over the eggs and larvae, to press her mouth for a mo- 

 ment into the sweet fluid, her labial and maxillary palps 



34 



