J70 ANTS AND CHILDREN OF THE GARDEN 



thrashing they deserve. They even search the grounds of 

 the Honey ant, 



CECIL. Most of the Garden ants around here are the 

 dark variety, but a few colonies are the variety called 

 bicolor have two colors black abdomen, and the rest of 

 the body brick-red. (Dorymyrmex pyramicus, the dark 

 variety. Common here. Dorymyrmex pyramicus var. bi- 

 color, has dark abdomen, but other parts reddish). 



DOROTHY. How can you tell this common ant from 

 others around here? 



CECIL. It has a pyramid or low cone on its thorax 

 not on its pedicel. It has one hump, or scale, on its pedicel. 



DOROTHY. The other Garden ant (Tapinoma sessile) 

 looks like it, but lias no pyramid on its back and the 

 hump, or scale, 011 its pedicel lies so close to the abdomen 

 (gaster) that you can hardly find it. 



KENNETH. The Garden ants often mine their homes 

 right on our ants' yard, but they don't enter the nest of 

 our ants half as often as the Acrobats do in fact, hardly 

 at all. Our ant yard is bare and sunny, and then the ants 

 waste a good deal of food for the Garden ants to eat. 

 Watch them search the premises of our ants. 



CECIL. A strong colony that had lived in the same 

 nest a year, slowly carried pupae to another nest forty 

 feet away, and this was in February. Only a part of the 

 colony moved. They often carry their young from one 

 nest to another. Maybe this is to save them from the 

 Acrobats. 



DOROTHY. A worker sticks a half dozen babies to- 

 gether and carries them all at once. 



FLORENCE. Generally it takes several days to remove 1 

 the babies from one nest to another often forty feet away. 

 Only a few are allowed 011 the trail at the same time. The 



