The "replete" workers, with their social stomachs distended with the sweet exudations 

 of oak galls, hang from the vaulted roof of the chamber in a cluster and function as so 

 many food reservoirs. (After H. McCook.) (See text, page 736). 



rearing the successive broods of larvae 

 from the eggs which the queen is now 

 able to produce in quantities. 



The larvse are fed more abundantly as 

 the number of workers increases, and 

 therefore develop into larger and more 

 vigorous individuals. As time goes on 

 and at the proper season, male larvae ap- 

 pear and develop, and the female larvse 

 are so well fed that they can develop 

 beyond the worker stage and become 

 queens. 



With the appearance of these sexual 

 forms the colony has reached maturity, 

 and although it may persist for many 

 years, it merely repeats each year this 

 same cycle of feeding and rearing as 

 great a number of individuals as possible 

 on the amount of food which the workers 

 can secure. 



The queen may live a dozen years or 

 more, and each worker may live three to 

 four years, but the males usually live only 

 a few weeks and die after the nup- 

 tial flight, being exhausted and knowing 

 neither how to feed theinselves nor how 

 to return to the nest. 



the; highest de;gre;e; of sflf-sacrifice 



Most extraordinary during the develop- 

 inent of the ant colony is the behavior of 



the workers, for though sterile and, under 

 ordinary circumstances, unable to lay 

 eggs, they nevertheless exhibit all the 

 other maternal instincts in an exagger- 

 ated degree. The worker, as we have 

 seen, is a form produced by inadequate 

 nourishment. It is a hunger form, so 

 inured to long fasting during its larval 

 life that even when it reaches maturity 

 it seems to prefer to starve, for though 

 greedy to fill its social stomach with 

 liquid food whenever there is an oppor- 

 tunity, it dispenses this store most gen- 

 erously to the larvae and its sister ants 

 and permits very little of it to pass the 

 valve into the individual stoinach, only 

 enough, in fact, to maintain healthful 

 activity. 



Ants are, therefore, the most thor- 

 oughgoing of communists, to whom in- 

 dividual possession as such has no mean- 

 ing beyond its benefit to the cominunity 

 as a whole. 



But even the worker's sterility, which 

 has given certain individualistic thinkers 

 such bad dreams, is neither fixed nor ir- 

 revocable. If the colony has a very 

 abundant food supply, or if its queen 

 dies, the small, undeveloped eggs, which 

 are always present in the ovaries of the 

 workers, may grow to full size, be de- 



747 



