46 



KNOWLEDGE 



[March 1, 1892. 



imprisoned and invisible Ant is ready for release. Then, 

 with their jaws they nibble and pinch at the loose-fitting 

 investment and make a neat slit down one side, and thus 

 open the prison doors. But even then the captive cannot 

 avail itself of the liberty which is thus brought within its 

 reach. It must be hauled out by the nurses, and stripped 

 of the thin skin which still enshrouds its Hmbs; those limbs 

 must then be helped into position, and the invalid stroked, 

 caressed and fondled with anteun.-e and legs till it begins 

 to collect its senses and become conscious of its powers. 

 It must then be led and guided about the nest, till it is 

 familiar with the details of that home in which, if its 

 structure fits it for that purpose, it must now take its 

 place as one of the great band of toilers, and show by its 

 deeds that the care that has been expended upon its educa- 

 tion has not been in vain. 



Some three or four weeks will have been passed by the 

 Ant in this state of inactivity, during which time it has 

 taken no food. But when it enters on its perfect condition, 

 hunger will again begin to assert itself, though the food 

 taken will not, as heretofore, contribute to swell its bulk, 

 for now waste and repair will be balanced, and the Ant 

 has attained its full size. Amongst the workers there is 

 often a good deal of variation in size ; there are large ones 

 which are called workers major, and small ones called 

 workers minor, and often intermediate sizes also ; but it 

 must not be assumed that the minors will grow into majors ; 

 whatever size the worker Ant has on quitting the pupa 

 skin, that it retains throughout the remainder of its life. 

 The same applies to the males, and to the females as well, 

 except in so far as the development of the eggs increases 

 the size of the abdomen. The range of difi'erence amongst 

 the workers is not the same in all Ants. Take, for example, 

 three of our commonest species ; two of these, the yellow 

 Ant (Ldsiua fl(inis) and the wood Ant (Fonnicn nifa) show 

 great inequality in size in the workers, while the common 

 garden Ant (f.iisiu.s nii/rr) has them much more uniform. 

 The larger workers have often a proportionately larger 

 head, indicating larger muscles and consequently more 

 power in the jaws, whence it has been generally supposed 

 that such forms are intended to act as soldiers and do the 

 chief part of the fighting of the community, but pugnacity 

 is by no means the monopoly of these big-headed forms, 

 and the little workers are quite ready to do battle if 

 occasion requires. 



Up to the point to which we have now conducted it, our 

 Ant has passed through a life of considerable monotony. 

 Its most extensive journeys have not extended over more 

 than a few inches of territory, and even these it has 

 performed by the aid of others ; its sole occupation, when 

 it has been doing anything more than simply lying still and 

 "developing," has been eating, and for this, too, it has 

 had to be a pensioner on the bounty of friends. It has 

 been from its birth an inhabitant of underground galleries 

 and tunnels, and has never seen the light of day, except 

 by accident. But now a vast change takes place ; the whole 

 world is before it, and if it is a worker, there awaits it a 

 life, extending over years it may be, full of variety and 

 activity, and crowded with incident and adventure. It is 

 here that the social insect gets the advantage of the 

 solitary one. The chief Itusinesses that engage the atten- 

 tion of the latter are provisioning and love. The former 

 is often uniform and prosaic enough, and even the latter, 

 while it may involve a certain amount of incident and 

 romance, is still as a rule an afi'air of such brevity that 

 there is hardly time for anything very striking in the way 

 of adventure to take place, before the adventurer is called 

 upon to pay the debt of Nature. But with the development 

 of the social instinct tliere comes an indefinite number of 



new responsibilities and endless opportunities of variety, 

 resulting from the complexity of the life and the increased 

 length of it, which seems to be the necessary accompani- 

 ment of the higher type of existence. To the threshold 

 of this life of variety and incident we have now brought 

 our Ant, and there we must leave it for the present, 

 deferring till next month an account of its further 

 adventures. 



ELEPHANTS, RECENT AND EXTINCT. 



By R. Lydekker, B.A. Cantab. 



ASSUREDLY of all the Mammals now inhabiting 

 this earth Elephants are those most justly 

 entitled to the epithet " antediluvian," since they 

 remind ns, far more vividly than any of their 

 modern contemporaries, of the gigantic extinct 

 Mammals of various kinds which flourished in that latest 

 epoch of geological history when man was but a compara- 

 tively new comer. A long acquaintance has, indeed, made 

 us so familiar with the appearance of Elephants that we 

 are too apt to forget what altogether strange and uncouth 

 creatures they really are. If, however, they had happened 

 to be included among those animals which disappeared 

 from the face of the earth before the historic period, and 

 were known to us solely by their skeletons, there can be no 

 doubt that they would be regarded as among the most 

 remarkable of Mammals. Moreover, if Elephants were 

 only known to us by their skeletons it would be more 

 than doubtful if we should ever have attained a correct 

 idea of their true form ; since, although the conformation 

 of then' jaws and teeth would clearly indicate that they 

 must have had some very peculiar method of feeding, 

 it would have required a very bold, not to say a very 

 imaginative man to have conceived the idea that these 

 creatm-es were furnished with that imique organ which 

 we term the trunk or proboscis. 



At the present day, it need scarcely be said, there 

 are but two living species of Elephants, difiering remark- 

 ably fi'om one another not only in external characters, but 

 also, as we shall notice later on, in the structure of their 

 teeth ; these two species being respectively confined to 

 Africa, and to India and adjacent regions. These two 

 kinds of Elephants are, however, merely the last survivors 

 of a vast host of extinct forms, some of which were closely 

 related to then- living cousins ; while others differed so 

 maj'kedly in the structure of their teeth as to have 

 received the distinctive ajspellation of Mastodons, although 

 they are really nothing but very generalized Elephants. 

 These so-called Mastodons carry ns backwards to the 

 middle of that division of the Tertiary period of the earth's 

 history known as the Miocene ; but when we have reached 

 to that stage all below is dark as regards the Elephantine 

 pedigree. And it is, indeed, one of the most remarkable 

 circumstances in Palseontology that although we know that 

 Elephants belong to the great group of Hoofed or 

 Ungulate Mammals, of which they form a well-marked 

 division, yet we have practically no sort of knowledge 

 of the many extinct forms which we presume must 

 have connected them with Ungulates of a more ordinary 

 type. 



Although the trunk and tusks of Elephants form their 

 most striking external features, yet it is not to these that 

 the naturalist looks at first when enquiring into the true 

 affinities and general structure of these animals, since 

 these come under the category of specialized and acquired 

 structures, which tell but little of an animal's past history ; 

 he looks rather to the structure of the internal skeleton, 



