62 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



fate than their husbands, for their number is far too large 

 for work to be found for them all. A few who chance to 

 find a hole or to dig a refuge in moist earth at the spot 

 whereon they descend, become the mothers of future colonies. 

 For the performance of this task the wings necessary for the 

 wedding tour are only burdensome and hindering ; and a 

 wonderful instinct if people will insist on the expression 

 teaches them to voluntarily free themselves from an organ 

 thenceforward useless and even mischievous. They there- 

 fore scratch at their wings, one after the other, with the 

 clawed ends of their feet, and drag and twist them about 

 until they fall off. This is the easier, because the articula- 

 tions of the wings with the body are veiy slight. The opera- 

 tion, further, does not appear to give them any pain. When 

 this business is over, the fertilised females are queens, and 

 they really have a kind of kingdom, for they are compelled 

 by passing ants to return to their native home, and are there 

 kept for the important business of egg-laying. 



So at least are things managed according to the majority 

 of writers on ant life ; but Forel entirely contradicts this 

 account, and maintains that such females only become 

 queens of the nest as have not shared in the swarming or 

 wedding-flight, and which have been fertilised within or on 

 the surface of the nest. According to him the females 

 which take part in the swarming never return to their own 

 nest, and, indeed, show a dislike to it. Therefore the 

 workers keep back a number of fertilised females, which 

 have been fertilised on the surface of the nest or close by 

 before the wedding-flight, and use these as the mothers of 

 the colony. They thereby ensure the important point of 

 preserving pure blood in the colony, since foreign males 

 never venture on the surface of another nest, while during 

 the swarming in the air there is great and unavoidable 

 mingling of the members of different colonies. The females 

 thus kept back quickly accustom themselves to captivity and 

 do not seek to escape. Sometimes there are only a few of 

 them, at other times twenty, thirty, or even more. They 

 are saved the trouble of pulling off their wings, for the 

 workers look to this business for them, and tear or bite them 

 off. 



Forel's view must command credence when we remember 

 that the wedding-flights often go very far from their nests, 



