1 68 Hillside. 



It at once set to work, made cells for the larvae, fed them and 

 the surviving adults, and soon restored the colony to a 

 flourishing and thriving condition. 



How this slave-making instinct originated is doubtful. It 

 is well known that ants which are not slave-makers will 

 carry off pupae of other species, to be used for food. If these 

 pupse hatched before they were required for that purpose, 

 they would naturally do such work as they would have done 

 in their own nest, and their presence proving useful to those 

 in whose nest they found themselves, the collection of pupae 

 would probably ba persevered in, and in tima such collection 

 may have become the sole aim of certain species, their house- 

 hold duties in the same manner becoming gradually and at 

 last entirely delegated to their prisoners. 



The keeping of aphides for domestic purposes by ants is 

 even still more wonderful. Aphides or plant lice are the insects 

 which are sometimes found in vast swarms on a variety of 

 trees. Their abundance is due to their ability, during the 

 summer months, to bring forth young without sexual action, 

 and to the rapidity with which these come to maturity. An 

 aphis in the early summer brings forth a number of young 

 alive by an advanced process of gemmation. In a few hours, 

 if the temperature be moderately high, these become adults 

 and produce young themselves, so that in a few days vast 

 swarms are thus parthenogenetically produced. But it is 

 not with their marvellous powers of reproduction so much 

 as with their ability to excrete a sweet sticky fluid, called 

 "honey dew," that we have to do. In some years the leaves 

 in gardens and woods are covered with the thick sweet 

 viscid fluid, and moths and other insects forsake the flowers 

 and feast on this " honey dew " with avidity. The ants 



