Jan. 13, 1 881] 



NATURE 



257 



perhaps one to two inches above the ground. If the disturbed 

 ants made any sound which was transmitted by the telephone, the 

 ants in the other nest ought to hive been thrown jnto confusion. 

 I could not, however, perceive tliat it made the slightest differ 

 ence to tliem. I tried the experiment three or four times, alv\ays 

 with the same result. I then put some syrup near a nest of L. 

 "igt'r, and when several hundred ants were feeding on the syrup 

 I blew on the nest, which always disturbs them very much. 

 They came out in large numbers and ran about in great excite- 

 ment. I then held one end of the telephone over the nest, the 

 other over the feeding ants, who, however, took not the slightest 

 notice. I cannot, however, look on these experiments as at all 

 conclusive, because it may well be that the plate of the telephone 

 is too stiflf to be set in vibration by any sounds w hich ants could 

 produce. 



On t/u Trcalment of Aphides. — Our countryman Gould, who^e 

 excellent little work on ants ^ has hardly received the attention 

 it deserves, observes that **the queen ant [he is speaking of 

 Liuiiis flaviis\ lays three different sorts of eggs : the slave, 

 female, and neutral. The two first are deposited in the spring, 

 the last in July and part of August ; or, if the summer be ex- 

 tremely fav')urable, perhaps a little sooner. The female eggs 

 are covered with a thin black membrane, are oblong, and about 

 the sixteenth or seventeenth part of an inch in length. The 

 male eggs are of a more brown complexion, and usually laid in 

 March." 



Here however our worthy countryman fell into an error, the 

 eggs which he thus describes not being those of ants, but, as 

 Huber correctly observed, of Aphides.^ The error is the more 

 pardonable, because the ants treat these eggs exactly as if they 

 were their own, guarding and tending them with the utmost care. 

 I fir>t met with them in Fel)ru.iry, 1S76, and was much asto- 

 nished, not being at that time aware of lluber's observations. I 

 found, as Huber had done before me, that the ants look the 

 greatest care of the-e eggs, cairyiug them off to the liwer cham- 

 bers with the utmost haste when the nest was disturbed. I 

 brought some home w ith me and put them near one of my own 

 nests, when the ants carried them inside. That year I was 

 unable to carry my observations further. In 1S77 I again pro- 

 cured soaae of the same egijs, and offered them to my ants, who 

 carried them into the nest, and in the course of March I had the 

 satisfaction of seeing them hatch into young Aphides. M. 

 Huber however does not think these are mere ordinary eggs. 

 On the contrary he agrees with Bonnet "that the insect, in a 

 state nearly perfect, quits the body of its mother in that covering 

 which shelters it from the cold in winter, and that it is not, as 

 other germs are, in the egg surrounded by food, by means of 

 which it is developed and supported. It is nothing more tlian 

 an asylum of which the Aphides born at another season have 

 no need ; it is on this account some are produced naked, others 

 enveloped in a covering. The mothers are not then truly 

 oviparous, since their young are almost as perfect as they ever 

 will be, in the asylum in which Nature has placed them at their 

 birth." ' 



This is, I think, a mistake. This is not the opportunity to 

 de cribe the anatomy of the Aphis ; but I may observe that I 

 have examined the female, and find these eggs to arise in the 

 manner so well described by Huxley in our Transactions,* and 

 which I have also myself observed in other Aphides and in allied 

 genera.' Moreover I have opened the eggs themselves, and 

 have also examined sections, and have satisfied my-elf that they 

 are true eggs containing ordinary yelk. If examined while still 

 in the ovary the germ-vesicle presents the usual appearance, but 

 in laid eg^s I was unable to detect it. So far from the young 

 insect being "nearly perfect," and merely enveloped in a pro- 

 tective membrane, no limbs or internal organs are present. 

 These bodies are indeed real ova, or pseudova ; and the young 

 Aphis does not develop in them until shortly before they are 

 hatched. 



When my eggs hatched I naturally thought that the Aphides 

 belonged to one of the species usually found on the roots of 

 plants in the nests of Lasius flttvns. To my surprise, however, 

 the young creatures made the best of their way out of the nest, 

 and indeed were sometimes brought out by the ants tliemselves. 

 In vain I tried them with roots of grass, &c. ; they wandered 



' "An Accnunt of English Ants." By the Rev. W. Gould, 1747. p. 36. 



^ My lamented friend Mr. Smith also observed these eggs (Entom. 

 Annual, 1871). He did not however identify the species to which they 

 belonged. 



,1 " The Natural History of Ants." By M. P. Huber, 1820, p. 246, 



* Trans. Linn, Sue, vol, .\xii, 1859. 



5 Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 



uneasily about, and eventually died. Moreover they did not in 

 any way resemble the subterranean species. In 1878 I again 

 attempted to rear these young Aphides ; but though I hatched a 

 great many eggs, I did not succeed. This year however I have 

 been more fortunate. The eggs commenced to hatch the first 

 week in March. Near one of my nests of Lasius JJavus, in which 

 I had placed some of the eggs in question, was a glass contain- 

 ing living specimens of several species cf plant commonly found 

 on or around ants' nasts. To this some of the young Aphides 

 were brought by the ants. Shortly afterwards I observed on a 

 plant of daisy, in the axils of the leaves, some small Aphides 

 very much resembling those from my nest, though we had not 

 actually traced them continuously. They seemed thriving, and 

 remained stationary on the dai.sy. Moreover, whether they had 

 sprung from the black eggs or not, the ants evidently valued 

 them, for they built up a wall of earth round and over them. 

 So things remained throughout the summer ; but on October 9 

 I found that the Aphides had laid some eggs exactly resembling 

 those foun I in the ants' nests ; and on examining daisy-plants 

 from outside I found on many of them similar Aphides, and 

 more or less of the same eggs. 



I confess these observations surprised me very much. The 

 statements of Huber have not indeed attracted so much notice 

 as many of the other interesting facts which he has recorded ; 

 because if Aphides are kept by ants in their nests, it seems only 

 natural that their eggs should also occur. The above case how- 

 ever is much more remarkable. Here are Aphides, not living 

 in the ants' nests, but outside, on the leaf-stalks of plants. The 

 eggs are 1 lid e.arly in October on the food-plant of the insect. 

 They are of no direct use to the ants, yet they are not left where 

 they are laid, where they would be exposed to the severity of 

 the weather and to innumerable dangers, but brought into their 

 nests by the ants, and tended by them with the utmost care 

 through the long winter months until the following March, when 

 the young ones are brought out and again placed on the young 

 shoots of the daisy. This seems to me a most remarkable case 

 of prudence. Our ants may not perhaps lay up food for the 

 winter, but they do more, for they keep during six months the 

 eggs which will enable them to procure food during the following 

 summer. 



No doubt the fact that our European ants do not generally 

 store up food in the usual way is greatly due to the nature of 

 their food. They live, as we know, partly on insects and other 

 small animals which cannot be kept fresh ; and they have not 

 learnt the art of building vessels for their honey, probably 

 because they are not kept in cells like those of the honey-bee, 

 and their pupa; do not construct firm cocoons like those of the 

 humble-bee. 



Moreover it is the less necessary for them to do so, because if 

 they obtain access to any unusual store of honey, that which 

 they swallow is only digested by degrees and as it is required ; 

 so that, as the camel does with water, they carry about with them 

 in such cases a supply of food which may last them a considerable 

 time. They have moreover, as we know, the power of regurgi- 

 tating this f )od at any time, and so supplying the larva; or less 

 fortunate friends. Even in our English ants the quantity of food 

 which can be thus stored up is considerable in proportion to the 

 size of the insect ; and if we watch, for instance, the little 

 brown garden-ant (Lasius niger) ascending a tree to milk their 

 Aphides, and compare them with those returning full of honey, 

 we shall see a nnrked difference in size. 



We have, indeed, no rea.sonto suppose that in our English ants 

 any particular individuals are specially told off to serve as recep- 

 tacles of food. W. Wesmael, however, has described ^ a remark- 

 able genus (Myrmecocystus mcxicanus], brought by M, de Normarjti 

 from Mexico, in which certain individuals in each nest serve as 

 animated honey-pots. To them the foragers bring their supplies, 

 and their whole duty seems to be to receive the honey, retain it, 

 and redistribute it wdien required. Their abdomen becomes 

 enormously distended, the intersegmental membranes being so 

 much extended that the chitinous segments which alone are 

 visible externally in ordinary ants seem like small brown trans- 

 verse bars. The account of these most curious insects given by 

 MM. de Normnn and Wesmael has been fully confirmed by 

 subsequent observers ; as, for instance, by Lucas,^ Saunders,^ 

 Edwards, ■■ Blake,' Loew,^ and McCook. 



> Bull, de TAcad. des Set. de Bn(.v cites. 



2 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, v, p, lii. 



3 Canadian Entomologist, vol. vii, p. 12. 



* Proc. Californian Academy, 1873. 5 Ibid. 1874, 



6 American Nat. viii. 1874. 



