FIELD WORK ON HYMENOPTERA. 14! 



ticularly good view of a gallery, or room, and the galleries 

 leading from it is obtained, make a picture of it. Do 

 you find ants going both ways in some of the passages? 

 Look for eggs, larvae, and pupae; and also discover the 

 granaries if possible. You may know them by the seeds 

 and other vegetable matter stored in them. Do you 

 find any insects in the granaries that might be serving 

 as food ? Do any of the ants exhibit any care for the 

 young when you disturb the nest ? Is this care evidently 

 the care for some particular ones among the immature ants, 

 or is it care for the welfare of the colony as a whole? It 

 will be quite a triumph if you are able to find any of the 

 mothers of the colony. The ant mother is larger and 

 thicker- bodied than are either the male ants or the 

 female workers; besides, when you have a nest under 

 examination, the males will not be likely to be living, as 

 you know that the males do not as a rule live long beyond 

 the starting of the ant home. 



Sir John Lubbock, the eminent English student of 

 insects, and especially of ants, bees, and wasps, gives 

 instructions as to how to arrange a nest for ants so that 

 their proceedings can be watched for one's self. He says : 

 ' ' After trying various plans, I found the most convenient 

 plan was to keep them in nests consisting of two plates 

 of common window glass about ten inches square, and 

 at a distance apart of from one-tenth to one-fourth of an 

 inch (in fact, just sufficiently deep to allow the ants 

 freedom of motion) , with slips of wood around the edges, 

 the intermediate space being filled up with fine earth. 

 If the interval between the glass plates was too great 

 the ants were partly hidden by the earth, but when the 

 distance between the glass plates was properly regulated 

 with reference to the size of the ants they were open to 



