HEST OF INSECTS, 409 



procure their food. The aliment contained in their 

 stomach is, on their return, equally distributed to 

 their companions. These juices scarcely evaporate, 

 during this season, owing to the thickness of the 

 honey rings investing the body. 1 have known ants 

 preserve, during a considerable time, their internal 

 stock of provisions, when they could not impart it to 

 their companions. When the cold increases in a 

 gradual manner, (and this is commonly what the 

 ants experience, who are screened from it by a thick 

 wall of earth,) they collect and lie upon each other 

 by thousands, and appear all hooked together. Is 

 this done in order to provide themselves a little heat ? 

 I presume this to be the case, but our thermometers 

 are not sufficiently delicate to indicate if this be really 

 the fact. 5 * 



During the frosts of 1829-30, we opened two 

 nests of the yellow ant (Formica flav a), in which we 

 found the inhabitants by no means torpid or inactive, 

 although not so lively as in summer ; but these 

 nests were in a peculiarly warm situation, being both 

 in the old trunks of willows, rendered quite spongy 

 by the dry-rot, and facing the south-west, where they 

 had the benefit of every glimpse of sunshine. We 

 searched with great minuteness for the eggs of the 

 aphides mentioned by Huber, but without success, 

 and we cannot account for their means of subsist- 

 ence, unless they fed on the various insects and crus- 

 taceous animals which abounded in the trees, 

 (Onisci, Julidce, &c.) They were also, in both in- 

 stances, within a yard of a stream of water, to the 

 vicinity of which we have observed that this species 

 is partial, and it is not improbable that it may form 

 an indispensable part of their subsistence. No spe- 

 cies of ants, indeed, can live without drinking. In 

 February of the same year, immediately after the 



* Huber on Ants, p. 239, See also this volume, pages 113-116. 

 VOL, vj. 35 



