ANTS — KEEPING APHIDES. 63 



on the young shoots of the daisy. This seems to me a most 

 remarkable case of prudence. Our ants may not perhaps lay 

 up food for the winter, but they do more, for they keep during 

 six months the eggs which will enable them to procure food 

 during the following summer. 



The following, which is taken from Biichner's 

 * Greistesleben der Thiere ' is perhaps a still more striking- 

 performance of the same kind as that which Sir John 

 Lubbock observed : — 



The author is debtor to Herr Nottebohm, Inspector of Build- 

 ings at Karlsruhe, who related the following on May 24, 1876, 

 under the title, ' Ants as Founders of Aphides' Colonies : ' — * Of 

 two equally strong young weeping ashes, which I planted in my 

 garden at Kattowitz, in Upper Silesia, one succeeded well, and 

 in about five or six years showed full foliage, while the other 

 regularly every year was covered, when it began to bud, with 

 millions of aphides, which destroyed the young leaves and 

 sprouts, and thus completely delayed the development of the 

 tree. As I perceived that the only reason for this was the 

 action of the aphides, I determined to destroy them utterly. 

 So in the March of the following year I took the trouble to 

 clean and wash every bough, sprig, and bud before the bursting 

 of the latter, with the greatest care, by means of a syringe. The 

 result was that the tree developed perfectly healthy and vigor- 

 ous leaves and young shoots, and remained quite free from the 

 aphides until the end of May or the beginning of June. My 

 joy was of short duration. One fine sunny morning I saw a 

 surprising number of ants running quickly up and down the 

 trunk of the tree ; this aroused my attention, and led me to 

 look more closely. To my great astonishment I then saw that 

 many troops of ants were busied in carrying single aphides up 

 the stem to the top, and that in this way many of the lower 

 leaves had been planted with colonies of aphides. After some 

 weeks the evil was as great as ever. The tree stood alone on 

 the grass plot, and offered the only situation for an aphides*^ 

 colony for the countless ants there present. I had destroyed 

 this colony ; but the ants replanted it by bringing new colonists 

 from distant branches, and setting them on the young leaves.^ 



Again — 



MacCook noticed, of the mound-making ants, that of the 

 ' Loc. cit. p. 121. 



