HONEY ANTS. 2 / 



creatures were clustered in numbers, their yellow 

 bodies pressed tight to the roof, while their big 

 round stomachs hung down behind from the slender 

 waist, perfect globes of translucent tissue, showing 

 the amber honey distinctly through the distended 

 skin* They looked like large white currants, or 

 sweet-water grapes ; and as they were actually filled 

 with grape-sugar, the resemblance was really quite as 

 true inside as out. 



Where did the honey come from ? That was the 

 next question. Everybody knows that ants are very 

 fond of sugar, and they often steal the nectar in 

 flowers which the plant has put there to entice the 

 fertilising bee. So much damage do they do in this 

 way, that many plants have clothed their stalks with 

 hairs, or sticky glands, on purpose, in order to pre- 

 vent the ants from creeping up the stem and rifling 

 the nectary. In other cases, however, plants actually 

 lay by honey to allure the ants, when they have any- 

 thing to gain from their visits, as in the case of those 

 Central American acacias, mentioned by Mr. Belt, 

 which have a nectar-gland on the leaf-stalk to attract 

 certain bellicose ants, which so protect them from 

 the ravages of their leaf -cutting congeners. Of 

 course, everybody has heard, too, how our own 

 species sucks honej^dew from the little aphides, or 

 plant-lice, which have often been described as ant- 

 cows. But it is not in either of these ways that the 

 honey-ants get their sugar. Dr. McCook had a little 

 trouble in settling this matter at first, for the honey- 



