70 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [LECT. 



selves, carefully unfolding their legs and smoothing out 

 their wings, with truly feminine tenderness and delicacy. 

 Under ordinary circumstances, an ants 5 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 niger, the small 

 brown garden ant, the workers are, for instance, mucli 

 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 abdomen is swollen into an immense sub- 

 diaphanous 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 

 proportion, and a second with immense heads, provided 

 with very large jaws. These latter are generally sup- 

 posed to act as soldiers, and the size of the head enables 

 the muscles which move the jaws to be of unusual 



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



