202 ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY 



plant-lice, scale-insects, certain small beetles and others, and 

 the sugary sap of certain trees. The males and fertile females 

 are fed by the workers. 



Besides feeding the larvae, the nurses have to see that the 

 young enjoy suitable temperature and humidity of the atmos- 

 phere; this is accomplished by moving the larvae or pupae from 

 room to room, farther below the surface, or even out into the 

 warm sunshine above ground. The carrying about of ants' 

 "eggs," which are not eggs but usually the cocooned pupae, 

 by the workers, is a familiar sight around any ant-nest, particu- 

 larly a disturbed one. The various special industries under- 

 taken by ants, as the attendance on and care of honey dew- 

 secreting plant-lice, the fungus-growing in their nests, the 

 harvesting (but not planting!) of food-seeds, the waging of 

 wars for pillage or slave-making, the long migrations, etc., etc., 

 are more or less familiar through much true and some inaccu- 

 rate popular writing. 



In any community there may live at one time several (two 

 to thirty) queens with wings removed. In small colonies there 

 is, however, usually but one. As already mentioned, winged 

 ants are to be seen only at certain times in the year. When a 

 brood of sexual individuals (males and females) is matured in 

 the community, these winged forms issue on a sudden impulse 

 (comparable in a way with the outwinging ecstasy of bees at 

 swarming time) from all the openings of the nest and take wing. 

 The air may be swarming with them, flights from neighboring 

 nests intermingling and joining. This is the mating flight, 

 and after it is over those ants which have escaped the bird 

 attacks and other dangers attending this bold essay into the 

 outer world alight or fall exhausted to the ground; the males 

 soon die, while the females pull the wings from the body and 

 get under cover. In the communal nest, therefore, winged 

 ants are rarely found. The life of the workers of most ant 

 species is conspicuously longer than that of other social insect 

 workers; they live for from one to three or four or even five 

 years. Lubbock has kept workers until six years old, and 

 queens until seven. The males all die young, but both other 

 kinds of individuals are exceptionally long-lived for insects. 



