HONEY ANTS. 29 



queen, the young female ants, the males, and the- 

 grubs or larvae are entirely dependent upon others 

 for support. Hence, alike among bees and ants, 

 stores of food are habitually laid by, sometimes in 

 the form of honey in combs and bee-bread, as with 

 the hive-bee; sometimes in the form of seeds and 

 grains, as with the harvesting ants. During the- 

 winter months or the rainy season, when food fails 

 outdoors, there must be some reservoir at home to 

 meet the demand of the starving community. Under 

 such circumstances, any trick of manner which tended 

 to produce a habit of storing food would be highly 

 useful to the nest as a whole ; and taking nests as 

 units in the struggle for existence, which they really 

 are, those nests which possessed any such trick would 

 survive in seasons when others might perish. So the 

 tendency, once set up, would grow and be strengthened 

 from generation to generation, those ants which stored 

 most food being most likely to tide over bad times, 

 and to hand on their own peculiarities to the other 

 swarms or nests which took origin from them. 



A set of primitive ants, living upon the honey of 

 the oak-galls, have no tendency to produce wax, like 

 bees, because their habits with regard to their larvae 

 do not lead them to make such cells at all. The eggs 

 and grubs simply lie about loose amongst the cham- 

 bers of the ant-hill, instead of being confined in 

 regular hexagonal cradles. Hence the bees' mode of 

 honey-storing is practically impossible for them : they 

 have not the groundwork habit from which it might 



