1 66 HONEY- DEW 



Becreting organs, pcrliaps under the peculiar agency of the 

 ants, who have regularly appropriated so many kinds of 

 aphides as miniature milch cows. 



So completely have some species of ants come to 

 recognise their own proprietary interest in the persons of 

 the aphides, that they provide them with fences and cow- 

 sheds on the most approved human pattern. Sometimes 

 they build up covered galleries to protect their tiny cattle ; 

 and these galleries lead fi'om the nest to the place where 

 the aphides are fixed, and completely enclose the little 

 creatures from all chance of harm. If intruders try to 

 attack the farmyard, the ants drive them away by biting 

 and lacerating them. Sir John Lubbock, who has paid 

 great attention to the mutual relations of ants and aphides, 

 has even shown that various kinds of ants domesticate 

 various species of aphis. The common brown garden-ant, 

 one of the darkest skinned among our English races, 

 ' devotes itself principally to aphides which frequent twigs 

 and leaves ' ; especially, so far as I have myself observed, 

 the bright green aphis of the rose, and the closely allied 

 little black aphis of the broad bean. On the other hand a 

 nearly related reddish ant pays attention chiefly to those 

 aphides which live on the bark of trees, while the yellow 

 meadow-ants, a far more subterranean species, keep flocks 

 and herds of the like-minded aphides which feed upon the 

 roots of herbs and grasses. 



Sir John Lubbock, indeed, even suggests — and how the 

 suggestion would have charmed ' Civilisation ' Buckle 1 — 

 that to this difiference o^' food and habit the distinctive 

 colours of the various species may very probably be due. 

 The ground which he adduces for this ingenious idea is a 

 capital example of the excellent use to which out-of-the- 

 way evidence may be cleverly put by a competent evolu- 

 tionary thinker. ' The Baltic amber,' he says, ' contains 



