NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



for the sake of their sweet and nourishing excretion, and 

 of bearing them from point to point, as they do their 

 own younghngs, and giving them generally the same 

 care. 



But the herding instinct has gone yet further than 

 transferring the aphids from their native quarters to 

 those of the ants. It has gone further even than taking 

 the eggs of aphids raised upon roots within the formicary 

 limits, and rearing from them milking chattels. Lord 

 Avebury has shown that ants have taken aphids' eggs 

 from the leaf-stalks of plants outside their nest where 

 they had been laid in the autunm; have transported 

 them to the interior of the formicary, where they were 

 protected from the severity of the weather and other 

 dangers; have tended them through the winter months, 

 and then brought out the young, and replaced them 

 upon the food-plant natural to them ! Similar facts have 

 been repeatedly observed by Professor A. S. Forbes, of 

 this country. He found ants tending the aphid eggs as 

 carefully as their own. They even carried them over 

 the winter season, to that end bearing them below the 

 frost line. They would explore the vicinage of growing 

 corn until they found the sprouting kernel, then mine 

 along the growing shaft and put the aphids upon it. 

 This clearly suggests, if it does not closely approach, 

 that human ability to rear and keep herds which our 

 race has held in such honor that it has called its kings 

 "shepherds of the people," its religious teachers "pas- 

 tors," and even the Supreme Deity "The Shepherd." 



Another feature of this herding habit deserves notice. 

 At times one may observe that the aphids clustered 

 around the axils of leaves or twigs on some plant, have 

 been enclosed within or surrounded by a light wall or 



50 



