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snapping at it furiously with their mandibles, and it was some time 
before they realized that it was good for food. Is it possible that 
being diurnal in their habits they have a perennial feud with honey 
bees when they compete with them for the contents of the nectaries 
of flowers. and that the smell of the honey forcibly suggested bees 
to their minds, and provoked the customary hostilities? Whereas the 
honey bees require a hollow tree and household furniture in the shape 
of waxen cells for rearing brood or storing honey, the ants can carry 
on their lives with nothing more than food, and a few cubie feet of 
soil. They use no implements, utensils nor bedding, and the sole 
garment they require is the swaddling gown of woven silk that wraps 
them in the pupal state. Ants have no personal ambition. The only 
end they have in view is to cover the earth with colonies of their own 
particular species, and urged by this remote, impersonal desire they 
spend their lives in ceaseless toil. The instinct which impels the ants’ 
unselfish labor is probably as irresistible as that which forces human 
beings to pursue their personal advantage. The personality of ants 
appears to be dissolved, and every individual seems to act as if it was 
the agent for that nameless, universal will that urges on the slow ad- 
vance of cosmic evolution. Without compulsion or direction their 
social life is carried on in perfect harmony. Each ant is a law to her- 
self; but as the aim of all is identical, a spirit of perfect harmony 
prevails. The ants have shown the possibility of a perfect communal 
life, and have proved that individuals can be incited to the maximum 
of effort with the minimum of personal advantage, and that the little 
states based on unselfish sisterhood are supremely fitted to survive in 
the struggle for existence. 
This paper would be incomplete without an expression of grateful 
acknowledgement to Professor William Moreton Wheeler for his kindness in 
identifying the various species of ants to which reference has been made. 
Without this help in naming specimens, and the assistance derived from his 
correspondence, the production of the paper would have been indefinitely 
delayed. 
The illustrations are from plates prepared expressly to illustrate the 
text, and are the work of the Lomaland Photo and Engraving Department, 
Loma Homestead, Point Loma, San Diego, California. 
It may be of interest to note that I have in my possession specimens of 
replete Honey Ants collected at Coronado, San Diego, in 1890, by Dr. F. E. 
Blaisdell, formerly a member of the San Diego Society of Natural History. 
They evidently belong to the species Myrmecocystus mexicanus, but whether 
to the pure type, or to one of the sub-species or varieties, it is impossible 
to determine, owing to their defective state of preservation. 
