Insect Study 



419 



THE WAYS OF THE ANT 



My child, behold the cheerful ant. 

 How hard she works, each day; 

 She works as hard as adarnant 

 Which is very hard, they say. 



— Oliver Herford. 



ERY many performances on the part of the ant seem 

 to us without reason; undoubtedly many of our 

 performances seem likewise to her. But the more 

 understandingly we study her and her ways, the 

 more we are forced to the conclusion that sbe 

 knows what she is about ; I am sure that none of us 

 can sit down by an ant-nest and watch its citizens 

 come and go, without discovering things to make 

 us marvel. 



By far the greater number of species of ants 

 find exit from their underground burrows, beneath 

 stones in fields. They like the stone for more 

 reasons than one ; it becomes hot imder the noon sun and remains warm 

 during the night, thus giving them a cozy nursery in the evening for their 

 young. Some species make mounds, and often several neighboring 

 mounds belong to the same colony, and are connected by underground 

 galleries. There are usually several openings into these mounds. In 

 case of some of the western species which make galleries beneath the 

 ground, there is but one opening to the nest and Dr. McCook says that 

 this gate is closed at night; at every gate in any ants' nest, there are 

 likely to be sentinels stationed, to give warning of intruders. 



As soon as a nest is disturbed, the scared little citizens run helter 

 skelter to get out of the way; but if there are any larvae or pupae about, 

 they are never too frightened to take them up and make off with them; 

 but when too hard pressed, they will in most cases drop the precious 

 burden, although I have several times seen an ant, when she dropped a 

 pupa, stand guard over it and refuse to budge without it. The ant's eggs 

 are very small objects, being oblong and about the size of a pin point. 

 The larvae are translucent creatures, like rice grains with one end pointed. 

 The pupae are yellowish, covered with a parchment-like sac, and resemble 

 grains of wheat. When we lift stones in a field, we usually find directly 

 beneath, the young of a certain size. 



There are often, in the same species of ants, two sizes; the large ones 

 are called majors and the smaller minors; sometimes there is a smaller 

 size yet, called minims. The smaller sizes are probably the result of lack 

 of nutrition. But whatever their size, they all work together to bring 

 food for the young and in caring for the nest. We often see an ant carry- 

 ing a dead insect or Fome other object larger than herself. If she cannot 

 lift it or shove it, she turns around, and going backwards, pulls it along. 

 It is rarely that we see two carrying the same load, although we have 

 observed this several times. In one or two cases, the two seemed not to 

 be in perfect accord as to which path to take. If the ants find some large 

 supply of food, many of them will form a procession to bring it into the 

 nest bit by bit; such processions go back by making a little detour so as 

 not to meet and inte"fere with thore coming. During most of the year, 

 an ant colony consists only of workers and laying queens, but in early 



