116 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



CHAPTER IX. 



CATTLE AND MILKING. 



THUS has this little but wonderful creature, suiting 

 itself to its life-conditions, reached a stage of culture 

 to which man only attained after passing through 

 two preceding long stages of hunting and shepherd life. 

 But as though this were not enough, ants also exercise the 

 usually accompanying duties of husbandry, care of cattle 

 and milking, in a way that does as much credit to their taste 

 as to their acuteness. They have as milch-cows if not 

 only, yet in preference to all other animals the .countless 

 and easily obtained Aphides, which yield from their thick 

 abdomens a sweet juice much liked by ants.* The ants are 

 not alone in this kind of gluttony. Flies, wasps, bees, etc., 

 are fond of this sweet liquid, and try to obtain it. Especially 

 in autumn there is opportunity of seeing willow-trees quite 

 covered with Aphides, accompanied by sucking ante and 

 other insects. But none of these insects know how to 

 manage the Aphides better than do the ants, which stroke 

 their abdomens with their antennas until they yield a drop 

 of their sweet juice. This must be done in a soft and 

 caressing manner peculiarly pleasant to the Aphides, for 

 Darwin tried in vain to imitate the ants and to persuade 

 them to yield their sweet excretion by stroking their 

 abdomens with a fine hair. " I removed all the ants," says 

 Darwin (" Origin of Species," ed. 1860, p. 210) "from a 

 group of about a dozen Aphides on a dock plant, and pre- 

 vented their attendance during several hours. After this 

 interval, I felt sure that the Aphides would want to excrete. 

 I watched them for some time through a lens, but not one 

 excreted ; I then tickled and stroked them with a hair in 



* [The Aphides yield a liquidresemhling honey both from the opening 

 of the alimentary canal and from two setiform tubes. TK.] 



