3 o NATURE STUDIES. 



be developed. But the ants have a crop, or first 

 stomach, in which they store their undigested food, 

 before passing it into the gizzard, exactly as in fowls. 

 When ants come back from feeding, whether on 

 flowers, on aphides, or on galls, their crops are very 

 much distended ; and they can bring back the food 

 to their mouths from these distended crops, to supply 

 the grubs and their other helpless dependents in the 

 nest. If therefore some of the ants were largely to 

 over-eat themselves, they would be able to feed an 

 exceptionally large number of dependants. 



Dr. McCook observed that some very greedy 

 workers, returning to the nest, fastened themselves 

 upon the roof in the same position as the honey- 

 bearers, and in fact seemed gradually to grow into 

 rotunds. The other ants would soon learn that such 

 lazy, overgrown creatures were the best to go to for 

 food ; and, in time, these gorgers might easily become 

 specialised into a honey-bearing set of insects. The 

 workers would bring them honey, which they would 

 store up and disgorge as needed for the benefit of 

 the rest as a whole. If the honey passed into their 

 gizzards and was digested, they would be a positive 

 dead loss to the community, and so the tendency 

 would soon be eliminated by natural selection, because 

 the nests possessing such workers could not hold 

 their own in bad times against neighbouring com- 

 munities. But as only a very small quantity is ever 

 digested just as much as is necessary to keep up the 

 sedentary life of such immovable fixtures the effect 



