HONEY ANTS 



ers in a nest, and all denied food. Some water was 

 given, but otherwise their fast was unbroken for over 

 four months. The plan was to force workers by hmiger 

 to go to their living store-rooms. But the perverse 

 Melligers made the rotunds' lodgings within the heart 

 of the nest, and no strategy could lure them into view. 

 Yet during four months the workers, whose movements 

 were observable, were in perfect health and in good 

 condition. Indeed, they seemed more vigorous than 

 their congeners in other nests, who were regularly fed. 

 When the formicary was opened the survivors looked 

 more like foragers returning from a banquet of oak-gall 

 nectar than the victims of a four months' fast. The 

 rotunds, too, were in good health; and, oddly enough 

 their abdomens, though somewhat diminished, seemed 

 to have been but sparingly tapped! The complement 

 of this experiment, a nest of workers alone, also denied 

 food, came to an imtimely entl by accident. 



The imprisoned honey ants uncovered many other 

 interesting traits; but space permits the record of but 

 one more — ^from the zoologist's stand-point, perhaps, the 

 most interesting of all. Are the rotunds a separate 

 caste? The question had been often asked, and the 

 facts as observed required a negative. No sign of a 

 separate caste appeared among the cocoons or callows. 

 Accurate body measurements showed no difference be- 

 tween the workers and the honey-bearers except in the 

 distended abdomen. The conclusion was reached that 

 the worker-majors for the most part, and sometimes 

 the minors, grow into rotunds by gradual distension of 

 the crop and expansion of the abdomen. 



The change of anatomy by which this occurs can easily 

 be understood by lay readers with the aid of accompanying 



109 



