6 Ants. 



weeks, in some species, as in our small yellow 

 Meadow Ants, the autumn larvae remain with com- 

 paratively little change throughout the winter. It 

 is much more difficult to ascertain the length of 

 life of the perfect insects, on account of their gre- 

 garious habits, and the difficulty of recognising 

 individual ants. I have found, however, as we 

 shall presently see, that their life is much longer 

 than has been generally supposed ; and I have 

 now two ants which are more than nine years old. 



I have kept in captivity about half of our British 

 species of ants, as well as a considerable number of 

 foreign forms, and for the last few years have 

 generally had from thirty to forty communities 

 under observation. 



7. Some ants have a sting ; some bite with their 

 jaws, and then squirt poison into the wound. In- 

 deed, in some cases the poison is sufficiently strong 

 itself to cause a wound. Moreover, some species 

 have the power of ejecting their poison to a con- 

 siderable distance. In Switzerland, after disturbing 

 a nest of the Horse Ant, I have found that a hand 

 held as much as 18 inches above the ants was 

 covered with acid. But even when the poison is 

 not thus fired, as it were, at the enemy from a dis- 

 tance, there are two cases in which the sting might 

 be allowed to fall into disuse. Firstly, those species 

 which fight with their mandibles might find it on the 

 whole most convenient to inject the poison (as they 

 do) into the wounds thus created. Secondly, if 



