MIGRATIONS OF INSECTS. 279 



this manner to the new ant-hill to begin operations, 

 a portion of them returned to the old for recruits, 

 and it was not a little interesting to observe their 

 procedure. They accosted the first they met, caress- 

 ing them with their antennae, and no doubt pro- 

 posing in their way the journey ; and when they 

 succeeded in persuading them, they laid hold of them 

 with their mandibles, coiled them up into the small- 

 est possible compass, and bore them off. All this 

 took place in the most amicable manner, with much 

 the same gesticulations as when one supplies another 

 with food. But it sometimes happened that the 

 individuals of the emigrant party seized the other 

 ants by surprise, dragging them out of the ant-hill, 

 and without allowing them time either to make up 

 their mind or to offer resistance, hurrying them off 

 with great rapidity." 



" My glass frames," continues Huber, " often per- 

 mitted me to see what occurred in the interior during 

 emigration, for when the labourers espied any issue 

 that had escaped my vigilance, they profited by it to 

 go in search of a place more to their liking. They 

 spread themselves at first separately over the floor, 

 and observed all the corners of my study, hoping to 

 discover an asylum in which they might be sheltered, 

 and on the moment they discovered this, they com- 

 menced recruiting. The individual which had found 

 a place of safety went immediately to seek its com- 

 panions, one after the other on the floor, and then in 

 the glass formicary ; but it was sufficient, as I dis- 

 covered, to stop the emigration, by simply taking 

 away at the time the first recruit, and it was not re r 

 newed till some other individual had made a suitable 

 discovery. The recruiting continued several days ; 

 but when the whole labourers knew the route to 

 their new habitation, they ceased to carry each other. 



2 B2 



