1 84 FLASHLIGFiTS ON NATURE 



is usual amon^ social insects, are very unimport- 

 ant and unconsidered creatures. The males and 

 females are winged when they first emerge from 

 their cocoons, and they use their wings for their 

 marriage flight, which is a recognised institution 

 among all insect socialists. Hut as soon as the 

 perfect females have been safely wedded, their 

 wings drop off ; or, in cases where they do not 

 fall of themselves, the insects themselves wriggle 

 and pull them off with their legs in the most 

 comic fashion. I have sometimes seen a dinner- 

 table in Jamaica covered by a sudden irruption of 

 female winged ants of tropical species, which in- 

 sisted on immolating themselves in the soup and 

 the wine (to the advantage of neither party), while 

 others blackened the table-cloth, and devoted them- 

 selves to getting rid of their wings with unpleasant 

 gyrations. As for the males, they are of no further 

 use to the community, so they die at once. But 

 the mass of the larvic develop into imperfect females 

 or workers, which are always wingless from the very 

 first, and it is these that form the ordinary ants of 

 the everyday observer. In many kinds there are 

 also two types of neuters : the one type, workers 

 proper, have rather large head,s and moderate jaws 

 — they are the foragers and builders of the com- 

 munity ; the other type, soldiers, have still bigger 

 heads and very powerful jaws — it is their task to 

 fight in defence of their native city. Other differ- 

 ences of less importance will come out in the course 

 of our subsequent explanation. 



The winged ants have large and many-faceted 



