52 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



and maxillary palpi, which appear only to serve for seeking 

 and perhaps also for testing food. 



The next most important organs after the feelers are the 

 generally toothed jawbones, nippers, upper jaws or mandibles, 

 which give the ants their peculiar power and force, but 

 which never serve, as was thought, for chewing or eating, 

 but are only weapons and organs of prehension. Ants do 

 not eat solid food, but only lick liquid or soft food with the 

 tongue, like dogs. They tear or bite animals with their 

 mandibles and then lick the soft interior. The mandibles 

 are peculiarly developed and strong in slave-making species 

 and in the so-called soldiers, which in some species are a 

 separate caste, apart from the workers. 



Of not less importance is the sting, situated in the 

 abdomen, which is not found in all ants, but only in the 

 genera Myrmica and Ponera. These sting severely, and pour 

 into the wound a poisonous or irritating fluid from a poison- 

 gland. Where no sting is present, the poison is dropped or 

 spirted from the abdomen into the wounds made by the 

 mandibles. Many kinds are able to spirt the contents of 

 their poisoning glands at an assailant or enemy from a distance 

 of several feet. The poison itself is the well known formic 

 acid, which, as Taschenberg has observed, can be seen 

 rising from the end of the abdomen of the enraged creature 

 like a fine silvery fountain in the sunrays. 



It is also worthy of notice that the whole alimentary 

 canal of ants is divided into two parts, of which the front 

 one serves the community, the hinder one the individual. 

 The oesophagus is widened out into a kind of crop in the 

 front part of that portion of it which lies in the abdomen, 

 and this enlargement receives and can retain a great amount 

 of liquid food. As soon as it is wanted, this food can be 

 voluntarily regurgitated and given out, and serves as nourish- 

 ment for the larvae or for hungry comrades, for instance for 

 males and fertile females which do not themselves seek for 

 food, or, in some of the slave-making species, for the food 

 of the lazy masters. 



Thus the ant is thoroughly fitted for the important part 

 it plays in nature and for the high place it takes in the world 

 of insects and of appendiculate animals, not only by the 

 high organisation of its brain and nervous system, but also 

 by the total constitution of its unusually powerful and yet 



