2 6 NATURE STUDIES. 



famous, little-known insect, the honey ant. To his 

 surprise, he accidentally stumbled here upon the very 

 creatures he had set out to find. There are two kinds 

 of entomologists : one kind, now, let us hope, rapidly 

 verging to extinction, sticks a pin through his speci- 

 mens, mounts them in a cabinet, gives them system- 

 atic names, and then considers that he has performed 

 the whole duty of a man and a naturalist ; the other 

 kind, now, let us hope, growing more usual every 

 day, goes afield to watch the very life of the creatures 

 themselves at home, and tries to learn their habits 

 and customs in their own native haunts. Dr. McCook 

 belongs to the second class. He forthwith pitched 

 his tent (literally) in the Garden of the Gods, and 

 proceeded to study the honey ants on the spot. 



Like many other ants, these little honey-eaters are 

 divided into different castes or classes; for besides 

 the primary division into queens or fertile females, 

 winged ants or males, and workers or neuters, the 

 last-named class is further sub-divided into three 

 castes of majors, minors, and minims or dwarfs. But 

 the special peculiarity which gives so much interest 

 to this species is the fact that it possesses, apparently 

 at least, a fourth caste, that of the honey-bearers, 

 whose abdomen is distended till it is almost spherical 

 by a vast quantity of nectar stored within it. Dr. 

 McCook opened several of the nests, and found these 

 honey-bearers suspended like flies from the ceiling, 

 to which they clung by their legs and appendages. 

 All over the vaulted dome of the ant-hill, these little 



