114 BRITISH INSECTS 



and here the females may sometimes be seen busy 

 with their digging. When the burrow is complete, 

 the insect has the interesting habit of closing the 

 entrance with a small stone, or a little lump of earth, 

 before she sets forth in search of her caterpillar prey. 



Ants 1 may be distinguished from all other Hymen- 

 optera by the fact that the one or two segments that 

 ^constitute the " waist " are nodular in form. Moreover, 

 the imperfectly developed females, or " workers," are 

 always wingless ; and these are the ants that we 

 usually see during the course of a country ramble. 

 All ants are social insects, living together in co- 

 operative communities, which comprise one or more 

 sexually perfect females, or queens, and large numbers 

 of workers. The latter build the nests, gather food, 

 and care for the young, while the queens are concerned 

 only with egg-laying. The bulk of the eggs laid in 

 any season serves to augment the worker population ; 

 but towards the end of the summer a brood of winged 

 males and females is produced. These individuals 

 leave the nest to pair, and although most of them are 

 quickly destroyed by birds and other insectivorous 

 creatures, a few of the queens succeed in founding new 

 communities. It is a curious fact that a queen, after 

 her nuptial flight, casts her wings, or is deprived of 

 them by the workers. Ants' nests are formed in 

 different situations, and in a variety of ways, accord- 

 ing to the species concerned. Some of the large 

 kinds, of which the wood- or horse-ant 2 is the best 

 known, build up huge mounds of fir needles, small 

 twigs, etc., and excavate galleries and chambers that 

 extend far into the ground below. Others, such as 

 the common yellow ant, 3 throw up hummocks of earth, 



1 Formicidee. 2 Formica rufa. 3 Lasius flavus. 



