﻿I 32 IIYMENOPTERA 



of a nutritious kind. The Insects we have spoken of are, how- 

 ever, rather of the nature of ant-cattle, and the fondness of the 

 ants for them is not Aery remarkable. The relations of the ants 

 to the peculiar species of Insects that live only in or around their 

 nests are much more extraordinary. The greater number of these 

 guests belong to the Order Coleoptera, and of these there are many 

 hundreds — probably many thousands — of species that depend on 

 ants for their existence. The family Pselaphidae furnishes a 

 large number of ants'-nest beetles, and it appears probable that 

 most of them excrete some 

 sugary substance of which the 

 ants are fond. Many of these 

 Pselaphidae are of the most 

 fantastic shapes, more especi- 

 ally the members of the sub- 

 family Clavigerides. But the ,. . . 



J «. n i > Fig. 82. — The beetle, A temdes, soliciting 



most curious 01 all the ants- food from an ant. (After Wasmann.) 



nest beetles are the Paussidae, 



a family exclusively dependent on ants, and having the curious 



faculty, when disturbed, of bombarding — that is, of discharging 



a small quantity of vapour or liquid in a state of minute 



subdivision accompanied by a detonation. Many species of 



Sta/phylinidae are peculiar to ant's-nests, and most of them are 



indifferent or inimical to their hosts, but some of them, such as 



Ate mrlcs (Fig. 82) and Lovneehusa, are doubtless producers of sweet 



stuff that is liked by the ants. The ants feed some of their special 



favourites amongst these guests in the same manner as they feed 



one another, viz. by opening the mouth, causing a drop of liquid 



to appear on the lip, and remaining passive while the guest 



partakes of the proffered bonne louche This way of giving food 



to other individuals is a most remarkable feature in the character 



of ants; it is not the same system that they adopt in feeding the 



larvae, for they then make a series of actual movements, and 



force the nutriment into the mouths of the grubs. Besides the 



Insects we have mentioned there are also Orthoptera, Hemiptera, 



Poduridae and Thysanura, Acari, and small Isopod crustaceans 



that live exclusively in company with ants. We have mentioned 



that a few Hymenopterous and ] )ipterous parasites have been 



detected living at the expense of ants ; it is probable that 



closer observation of the ant larvae and pupae in their nests 



