234 GO TO THE ANT 



converting himself into a living honey -jar, from which all 

 the other ants in his own nest may help themselves freely 

 from time to time, as occasion demands. The tribe to 

 which he belongs lives underground, in a dome-roofed 

 vault, and only one particular caste among the workers, 

 known as rotunds from their expansive girth, is told off 

 for this special duty of storing honey within their own 

 bodies. Clinging to the top of their nest, with their round, 

 transparent abdomens hanging down loosely, mere globules 

 of skin enclosing the pale amber-coloured honey, these 

 Daniel Lamberts of the insect race look for all the world 

 like clusters of the little American Delaware grapes, with 

 an ant's legs and head stuck awkwardly on to the end 

 instead of a stalk. They have, in fact, realised in every- 

 day life the awful fate of Mr. Gilbert's discontented sugar- 

 broker, who laid on flesh and ' adipose deposit ' until he 

 became converted at last into a perfect rolling ball of 

 globular humanity. 



The manners of the honey-ant race are very simple. 

 Most of the members of each community are active and 

 roving in their dispositions, and show no tendency to undue 

 distension of the nether extremities. They go out at 

 night and collect nectar or honey-dew from the gall-insects 

 on oak-trees ; for the gall-insect, like love in the old Latin 

 saw, is fruitful both in sweets and bitters, melle etfelle. 

 This nectar they then carry home, and give it to the rotunds 

 or honey-bearers, who swallow it and store it in their round 

 abdomen until they can hold no more, having stretched 

 their skins literally to the very point of bursting. They 

 pass their time, like the Fat Boy in ' Pickwick,' chiefly in 

 sleeping, but they cling upside down meanwhile to the 

 roof of their residence. When the workers in turn 

 require a meal, they go up to the nearest honey-bearer and 

 stroke her gently with their antenna. The honey-bearer 



