172 ANTS AND CHILDREN OF THE GARDEN 



Dwarfs. Scale Showing Sizes of Ants. 



DOROTHY. Sometimes small ants make raids on our 

 cupboard. 



ANT. Same here. 



DOROTHY. Why don't you catch them? 



ANT. Why don't you? 



CECIL. Strange that such small ants can capture a 

 large one. 



ANT. The small ones are likely to have poison or stings, 

 and to be good fighters. But four or five may give up 

 their lives to capture one large one. 



KENNETH. You say that most colonies have two main 

 sizes of ants. 



ANT. Yes. The large ones are called Major Workers 

 and the small ones Minor Workers. Minims are still 

 smaller. There may be a few of other sizes. 



KENNETH. I buried some walnut kernel near the tele- 

 phone pole hoping to catch some stray ants. Afterwards 

 I found 500 tiny ants eating the nut, They were less than 

 one-sixteenth of an inch long. 



CECIL. This ant (Solenopsis texana) is light yellow; 

 has two humps on its pedicel, and its eyes are mere dots 

 under the glass. It lives underground, steals babies 

 through its small galleries; will also eat seeds; may see 

 light, and has a queen a thousand times as large as a 

 worker. We might call this the Dwarf ant. 



ALBERT. I wonder if it is the ant that is making its 

 craters only as big as a nickel. 



KENNETH. Those at the pole dumped quite a pile of 

 nut flour out of their mouth pouches, and it was' as fine as 

 dust. They left in two weeks. 



FLORENCE. I've tried to draw a scale showing the 



