122 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



Tendre and established on the edge of a little wood near 

 Vaux, at oace attack without fear two nests of Lasius niger 

 and Lasius flavus. After they had slain many of their 

 enemies, they rushed upon the shrubs growing around, and 

 chased off the ants which were on them in order to seize 

 their Aphides. They tried to do the same with an oak 

 occupied by Camponotus ligniperdus, whereon these large, 

 strong, and warlike ants kept their Aphides. They made 

 unheard-of efforts to obtain their object, but failed. They 

 were flung back by their terrible foe and killed by hundreds, 

 and at last gave up the enterprise. They indemnified 

 themselves therefor by seizing a number of grasshoppers' 

 holes, and chasing away the inhabitants. As Forel remarks, 

 this is a habitual method of obtaining for themselves a tem- 

 porary dwelling adopted by almost all kinds of ants. Three 

 or four of them push into a grasshopper's hole ; it comes 

 out, and tries to drive away its foes by biting and seizing 

 them. But the ants fling themselves upon it, hold down 

 its legs and sprinkle it with their poison. The grasshopper 

 yields, leaves its nest, and is fortunate if it escapes with life. 

 Its dwelling is then taken possession of by the ants. Ants 

 fight over sugar thrown in their way, just as they do over 

 Aphides. Forel one day threw a piece of sugar between 

 two columns of the Lasius emarginatus and the Tetramorium 

 ccespitum (turf -ant) which had been fighting, but were then 

 retreating on account of the sun. The battle broke out 

 anew, and that most vigorously. The emarginati were 

 beaten and pursued to their nest, while the victors seized 

 the sugar. In South America there is an ant, Myrmica or 

 Atta saccharum, which lives only on sugar, or rather on the 

 juice of the sugar-cane, and commits terrible depredations 

 in sugar plantations by burrowing under the roots. It is 

 thence called the sugar-ant. 



McCook (foe. ctV., p. 275) gives a very remarkable observa- 

 tion as to the milking of Aphides made on the American 

 mound-building ant (F. exsectoides), whose large buildings 

 have already been described after he had very accurately 

 described the process of milking. He noticed that of the 

 workers returning to the nest from the tree on which the 

 milking was going on, a far smaller number had distended 

 abdomens than among those descending the tree itself. A 

 closer investigation showed that at the roots of the trees, at 



