THE Cows THAT ANTS MILK 19 



the following March," when they are brought out 

 again and placed on their special food-plant. 



Lubbock even notes that ants have domesticated 

 a far larger variety of other animals than we our- 

 selves have. Our list includes at best the horse, 

 the dog, the cat, the cow, the camel, the sheep, the 

 llama, the alpaca, the goat, the hen, the duck, the 

 goose, the bee, the silkworm, and a dozen or so 

 others ; while ants have domesticated no fewer than 

 584 different kinds of crustaceans and insects, in- 

 cluding beetles, flies, and mites, some of which 

 have lived for so many generations in the dark 

 galleries of the ant-hills that they have become 

 totally blind, as happens almost always, in the long 

 run, with underground animals. 



During the live-long summer the aphides go on, 

 eating and drinking, budding out new broods 

 with inexhaustible fertility. They settle down 

 calmly on the spot where they were born, they 

 stick to it for life, and they seldom move away 

 from their native twig unless somebody push.es 

 them, for though they have legs, they do not care 

 to use them except on extreme provocation. But 

 when autumn arrives "a strange thing happens." 

 Broods of perfect winged males and wingless 

 females are then produced ; and the males of these, 

 like almost all other insects, take a marriage flight, 

 find their predestined mates, and become with 

 them the parents of the dormant eggs which outlive 

 the year, and carry on the race to the succeeding 

 summer. While warm weather lasts, few or no 



