LIFE HISTORY OF CARPENTER ANT. 21 3 



incline. All four were brought together at the ends into triangular- 

 shaped vestibules. A single tube led from one of these to the 

 nest, and one from the other to the feeding-room. After this 

 apparatus had been set up for forty-eight hours and the ants had 

 become somewhat accustomed to the system of tubes, I placed in 

 the feeding-room about two hundred larvae which had been taken 

 from the nest two hours before. Two small workers were in the 

 tubes when the larvae were placed in the feeding-room. They 

 were apparently lost, for they divided their time between remain- 

 ing perfectly motionless as if trying to gain their bearings, clean- 

 ing their antennae, and running frantically about in the tubes. 

 After about twenty minutes of such conduct, one of them entered 

 the feeding-room and discovered the larvae. She examined them 

 carefully with her antennae and then, with more excitement than 

 before, renewed her search for the nest. She ran wildly about 

 the system of tubes and the feeding-room for twenty-two minutes, 

 and then found her way from the vestibule to the nest. On 

 reaching the nest she ran against five of her companions very 

 much as ants do when they first discover a stranger in the nest, 

 and she then returned directly to the larvae, passing through the 

 straight tube. The five friends which had been greeted in this 

 peculiar way turned around a time or two and then followed their 

 informant immediately into the tubes, all passing into the straight 

 tube, and three of them going directly to the larvae in the feeding- 

 room. The other two seemed to lose the trail in the second 

 vestibule, and began running about the tubes. Each of the four 

 who reached the larvae began carrying them into the straight tube, 

 and after making three trips from the larvae to this tube, the 

 original discoverer of the larvae returned to the nest and, by the 

 same behavior as before, succeeded in bringing three others to 

 the scene of activity. Before all the larvae were removed from 

 the feeding-room five ants had returned to the nest for help and 

 each time secured it. Thirty ants were in this way called into 

 service, yet not an ant left the nest which had not been greeted 

 in this peculiar way. After all the larvae had been carried into 

 the straight tube, the ants began carrying them into the nest, and 

 as the larvae arrived in the nest other ants joined in the work, so 

 that the tubes were soon alive with ants. 



