in.] KINDS OF INDIVIDUALS. 71 



attempt, if they were not assisted ; and it is very 

 pretty to see the older ants helping them to extricate 

 themselves, carefully unfolding their legs and smooth- 

 ing out their wings, with truly feminine tenderness and 

 delicacy. 



Under ordinary circumstances, an ants' nest, like a 

 beehive, consists of three kinds of individuals ; workers, 

 or imperfect females (which constitute the great majority), 

 males, and perfect females. There are, however, often 

 several queens in an ants' nest ; while, as we all know, 

 there is never more than one in a hive. The ant queens 

 have wings, but after a single flight they tear off their 

 own wings, and do not again quit the nest. In addition 

 to the ordinary workers, there is in some species a second, 

 or rather a third, form of female. In almost any ants' 

 nest, we may see that the workers differ more or less in 

 size. The amount of difference, however, depends upon 

 the species. In Lasius niyer, the small brown garden 

 ant, the workers are, for instance, much more uniform 

 than in the little yellow meadow ant, or in Atta barbara, 

 where some of them are more than twice as large as 

 others. But in certain ants there are differences still 

 more remarkable. Thus, in a Mexican species, besides 

 the common workers, which have the form of ordinary 

 neuter ants, there are certain others, in which the abdo- 

 men is swollen into an immense subdiaphanous sphere. 

 These individuals are very inactive, and principally 

 occupied in elaborating a kind of honey. 1 In the 

 genus Pheidole, very common in southern Europe, there 

 are also two distinct forms of workers without any 

 intermediate gradations ; one with heads of the usual 



1 Westvvood, Modern Classification of Insects, vol. ii. p. 225. 



