276 ENTOMOLOGY 



They have no permanent abode> but now and then appropriate some 

 convenient hole for the purpose of raising a new brood of marauders. 



Slave-making Ants. It is a fact that some ants make slaves of 

 other species. Formica sanguined, for example, will attack a colony of 

 Formica fusca, kill its active members in spite of their determined re- 

 sistance, kidnap the larvae and pupae and carry them home, where the 

 captives receive every care, and at length, as imagines, serve their masters 

 as faithfully as they would serve their own species. In the Alleghanies, 

 according to McCook, colonies of F. fusca occur where there are no "red 

 ants" (F. sanguined), but are hard to find where the enslaving species 

 occurs. 



Although F. sanguinea can exist very well without slaves, Polyergus 

 rufescens, of Europe, is notoriously dependent upon their services, it 

 being doubtful whether it is capable of feeding itself. This species is 

 powerful as a warrior, but its mandibles are of little use, except to pierce 

 the head of an adversary. Strongylonotus is still more helpless, while 

 Aner gates (also of Europe) is said to depend absolutely upon its slaves. 



Polyergus lucidus occurs in the Alleghanies, where the colonies of this 

 species, according to McCook, contain large numbers of the workers of 

 Formica schaufussi. The masters are good fighters but do no other work, 

 and have not been seen to feed themselves, though they may often be 

 seen feeding from the mouths of their slaves. 



Honey Ants. Among ants in general, the workers that stay in the 

 nest receive food from the mouths of the foragers a custom which has 

 led to the extraordinary conditions found in the " honey ants," in which 

 certain of the workers sacrifice their own activity in order to act as living 

 reservoirs of food for the benefit of the other members of the colony. 

 This remarkable habit has arisen independently, in different genera of 

 ants, in North America, Australia and South Africa, as Lubbock observes. 



The honey ant whose habits are best known, through the studies of 

 McCook and others, is Myrmecocystus melliger, of Mexico, New Mexico 

 and southern Colorado. In this species some of the workers hang slug- 

 gishly from the roof of their little dome-like chamber, several inches under- 

 ground, and act as permanent receptacles for the so-called honey, which 

 is a transparent sugary exudation from certain oak-galls; it is gathered 

 at night by the foraging workers and regurgitated to the mouths of the 

 " honey-bearers," whose crops at length become distended with honey 

 to such an extent that the insects (Fig. 286) look like so many little 

 translucent grapes or good-sized currants. This stored food is in all 

 probability drawn upon by the other ants when necessary. 



