2 Ants. 



serve attention from their utility to man, some 

 from their power of inflicting injury. Among 

 insects there are few, if any, whose habits are 

 more interesting than those of Ants. They live in 

 large communities : they build houses ; they make 

 roads ; some of them, as we shall presently see, 

 keep other insects, just as we keep cows ; and some 

 of them even have slaves. 



In this country we have rather more than thirty 

 kinds ; but ants become more numerous in species, 

 as well as in individuals, in warmer countries, and 

 more than a thousand species are known. Even 

 this large number is certainly far short of those 

 actually in existence. 



2. No two species of ants are identical in habits ; 

 and, on various accounts, their mode of life is far 

 from easy to unravel. Most of their time is passed 

 underground ; all the tending of the young, for 

 instance, is carried on in the dark. I have for 

 some years kept many nests of various species 

 under observation, and these have given me special 

 facilities for observing the internal economy of 

 ant life. Another main difference between my 

 observations and those of previous naturalists has 

 consisted in the careful record of the actions of 

 individual ants. The most convenient mode of 

 marking them was, I found, a small dab of paint 

 on the back. 



3. The life of an ant falls into four well-marked 

 periods those of the egg, of the larva or grub 



