WASPS, ANTS AND BEES 201 



inter-relations between certain plants and certain ant species 

 in tropic regions, whereby the plant seems to have developed 

 suitable cavities for the accommodation of the ants, whose pres- 

 ence in turn is advantageous to the plant by the protection it 

 affords against the ravages of certain leaf-eating insects which 

 are repelled, or rather attacked as prey, by the ants. In many 

 cases two ant species will live together in a compound or mixed 

 nest, the relation between the two species being (a) simply 

 that of two close neighbors, friendly or unfriendly; (b) that 

 of two species having their nests with "inosculating galleries" 

 and " their households strangely intermingled but not actually 

 blended"; (c) that of one species, usually with workers of 

 minute size, which lives in or near the nests of other species 

 and preys on the larvae or pupae or surreptitiously consumes 

 certain substances in the nests of their hosts some different 

 larger species that is, the relation of thief and householder; 

 (d) that of two species living in one nest but with independent 

 households, one of these species living as a guest or inquiline 

 at the expense of the food-stores of the other, but consorting 

 freely with their hosts and living with them on terms of mutual 

 toleration or even friendship; and (e) that of slave-maker and 

 slave, a relation not at all rare and readily observed all over 

 our country. 



Inside the nest the eggs are laid by the queen or queens in 

 large numbers, not in separate cells as with the wasps and 

 bees, but in little piles heaped together in various rooms and 

 sometimes moved about by the workers. The hatching larvae, 

 tiny, white, footless, helpless, soft-bodied grubs, are fed by the 

 workers either a predigested food regurgitated from the mouth, 

 or chewed fresh insects, caught and killed by the workers, or 

 dry seeds or other vegetable matter brought into the hive and 

 stored in the "granary" rooms. A single species may use all 

 these different kinds of food, but for the most part the ants 

 belonging to one species habitually use one kind of food for the 

 young. The primitive food consists of seeds and cut-up 

 insects. The adult ants feed on a variety of substances, both 

 animal and vegetable, almost all, however, having a -special 

 taste for sweetish liquids, such as the secreted honey- dew of 



