NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



are plainly overloaded, no loss is wrought to the com- 

 mune by relieving them. 



Besides, it seems probable that the instinct which 

 urges repletes to gather store for the larvae, nymphs, and 

 other dependants, might prevent them from yielding a 

 part of their store to their fellow-workers after the nest 

 had once been reached. It may be supposed that the 

 surplus honeydew would be kept for individual delecta- 

 tion, and thus the builders and sentinels be compelled 

 to leave their work and forage for themselves. There- 

 fore the general movement to arrest the repletes at the 

 stations near the foraging-grounds is clearly for the 

 public good. 



The habit as here described prepares us to see how 

 important to ants might be the domestication of aphid 

 herds. That this is accomplished any one may readily 

 satisfy himself by turning up flat stones in a field or 

 woodside on a warm spring day. He will see groups 

 of ants clustered upon the mider part of the stone or 

 in the excavated rooms and galleries in the matrix or 

 pit beneath. Along with them he will see bunches of 

 aphides. Great excitement will at once ensue, and the 

 agitated emmets, each seizing an aphis in her jaws, will 

 plunge with it into the underground galleries. Soon 

 both ants and aphids will have disappeared. 



These aphid herds, as seen in early spring, are plump, 

 and show signs of having weathered the winter in robust 

 health. Evidently they had been well cared for by 

 their emmet mistresses, whom they had doubtless repaid 

 by draughts of honeydew. And this care extends also 

 to the attention to their physical health and comfort, by 

 which they are brought up from the cooler subterra- 

 nean parts to the warm and dry vicinage of the stone, 



48 



