196 



Flashlights on Xatikk 



a troop of ants trying to drag a dead insect over 

 a gravel path, and surmounting all obstacles with 

 clumsy ingenuity. Ants, in short, are built for 

 navvies ; they are insect engineers, and they have 

 acquired a form exactly adapted to their peculiar 

 habits. 



Hut why are the worker ants so nearly blind ? 

 That must surely hv a disadvantage to them. 



Xot a bit of it. 

 Ant,; work mainly 

 in dark under- 

 grou.id passages, 

 where the sense 

 of sight would be 

 of little use ; and, 

 moreover, like all 

 hunting animals, 

 they lind smell 

 more important as 

 an indicator of 



NO. 8. — HEAD OF C.ARDEN ANT. WITH EYKS, food iu tllC OpCU 

 ANTENN.l.;, JAWS, AM. IFELERS, ^liaU visloU. ThC 



hound does not 

 /ook for the fox he sniffs and scents him. Now, 

 whenever any sense is relatively unimportant, an 

 economy may be effected bv suppressing or cur- 

 tailing it ; the material that would otherwise go to 

 making and repairing its organ is more profitably 

 employed on some better work elsewhere. Ants 

 are obviouslv descendants of flvin<i ancestors, none 

 of which were W(Mkers ; and the fiying males and 

 females possess to this day the organs of sight 



