l66 FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



care of as are infants among the human kind. The 

 nurses must move eggs, larvae, and pupae about in the 

 nest from room to room, up or down, as the need may be 

 for keeping the developing insects at the temperature 

 best for their development. 



The various ant industries may include honey- 

 gathering from plant lice or from fresh galls on oak trees. 

 This honey supplied by the tree is a sweetish liquid 

 exuded from the plant where some insect has stung it in 

 the act of laying its egg; and the wounded plant is in 

 some way influenced to secrete about the greedy larva 

 this sweetish fluid which is watched for by the ant, 

 licked up and brought into the nest to feed the young ants 

 during their immature stages. Among the Camponotidae 

 an additional class of workers must act as honey jugs, in 

 which the honey brought in by the foraging ants is stored, 

 to be served out at some future time on the requisition 

 of some nurse-worker. Others have laid upon them 

 the task of foraging for the animal or vegetable food 

 also used in feeding the larvae, and eaten as well by the 

 indoor workers, the males, and the ant mothers. Have 

 you not often seen two or three ants tugging away at 

 some beetle or worm a good deal larger than all of them 

 put together, pushing and pulling all the time, seeming 

 to have just one idea in their stubborn heads, that that 

 worm must be got home at any cost? The vegetable 

 food gathered consists largely of plant seeds which are 

 stored in the granaries, extra large chambers or galleries. 

 The cleaning of the nest often results in some of these 

 seeds being brought out, and it not infrequently happens 

 that some of them grow where they are dropped. This 

 may account for the ant fields and the ant husbandry so 

 often spoken of. 



