8) 
Hor more than nine months I was unable to get the least indiea- 
tion as to the source of their honey. Occasionally foraging ants would 
drag a dead bee or other insect into the nest; but I could never find 
any foragers returning with distended crops. 
On March 16th, 1911, however, it seemed as if the whole population 
was on the move, and streaming up and down the trunk of a neigh- 
boring pepper tree (schinus molle). An examination of the iree by 
daylight showed a quantity of blossoms, but I could find only one or 
two scale insects. My captive ants greedily lapped up the neetar from 
milking’? the aphides wpon 
roses and carnations at night. It is probable that almost ali the wild 
tc 
these flowers. I have found these ants 
flowers are visited by the lores ants. I know they get nectar from 
the “rattlesnake weed’? (Euphorbia setiloba), the honey plant (Kehium 
simplex, a cultivated flower), and the blossoms of that fraerant wild 
shrub, Ceantothus cuneatus. As evidence of the stay-at-home habits 
of these ants, I can certify that a honey plant was in full bloom 
twenty-seven feet away from their nest and yet it was three weeks 
before the foragers discovered 
The honey stored in a replete of average size I found to weigh 
0.1885 of a gramme, and if we take MeCook’s figure of 690 repletes in 
a nest of the horti-deorum variety™ to be approximately true of M. M. 
Mojave, this would give ug 113.10 grammes, or a grand total of about a 
quarter of a pound of honey. Small though it may appear to us, I 
fancy that the knowledge of a share in this provision ‘mparts a certain 
dignity to every individual member of the nest. 
These ants do not display such a wolfish eagerness to acquire 
chance scraps of food, as is shown by other species, who live from hand 
to mouth. To show the inoffensive character of the ants under consid- 
eration, | may mention that once a troop of little black ants (Dary- 
myrmese pyramicus var. niger) gathered round to lap up some honey 
which I had put at the nest entranee, but there was no resentment ex- 
pressed towards them. 
When watching the nest at night one may sometimes see erickets 
hop about among the ants who cover the ground outside the entrance ; 
but no notice is taken of these intruders, and they hop away in a leis- 
urely manner. Once I saw a tiny ericket emerge from the nest among 
the moving throng of ants, and markedly differentiated from his com- 
panions by his sudden, jerky action of progression. He skirmished 
about for a minute or two and then retreated down the hole. Hyidently 
he was one of the ‘‘pets’’ of the nest. 
Among the solitary insects, such as the flies, the moths and beetles, 
only a very small percentage of their numerous offspring ever reach 
*“Nature’s Craftsmen.” Page 104. 
