168 HONEY-DEW 



those of the preceding autumn. This case, as the prac- 

 tised observer himself remarks, is an instance of prudence 

 unexampled, perhaps, in the animal kingdom, outside man. 

 ' The eggs are laid early in October on the food-plant of 

 the insect. They are of no direct use to the ants ; yet 

 they are not left where they are laid, exposed to the 

 severity of the weather and to innumerable dangers, but 

 brought into their nests by the ants, and tended by them 

 with the utmost care through the long winter months until 

 the following March, when the young ones are brought out 

 again and placed on the young shoots of the daisy.' Mr. 

 White of Stonehouse has also noted an exactly similar 

 instance of formican providence. 



The connection between so many ants and so many 

 species of the aphides being so close and intimate, it does 

 not seem extravagant to suppose that the honey-tubes in 

 their existing advanced form at least may be due to the 

 deliberate selective action of these tiny insect-breeders. 

 Indeed, when we consider that there are certain species of 

 beetles which have never been found anywhere except in 

 ants' nests, it appears highly probable that these domesti- 

 cated forms have been produced by the ants themselves, 

 exactly as the dog, the sheep, and the cow, in their 

 existing types, have been produced by deliberate human 

 selection. If this be so, then there is nothing very out-of- 

 the-way in the idea that the ants have also produced the 

 honey-tubes of aphides by their long selective action. It 

 must be remembered that ants, in point of antiquity, date 

 back, under one form or another, no doubt to a very remote 

 period of geological time. Their immense variety of genera 

 and species (over a thousand distinct kinds are known) show 

 them to be a very ancient family, or else they would not 

 have had time to be specially modified in such a wonder- 

 ful multiformity of ways. Even as long ago as the time 



