Minutes of Proceedings xix 
from Mr. Hutchinson, in which case Mr. Trimen intends to make a 
further communication to the Society. 
The Natal honey-bearer is only about half the size of the American, 
and less than half that of the Australian kind, being about } inch in 
length, while the gorged abdomen is about 52, inch in diameter. 
In the case of the American ants referred to, it seems clear that the 
helpless honey-bearers are not a distinct caste or class of the community, 
but merely a certain number of the larger workers which, in the 
economy of the nest, are utilized for the storage of honey. It would 
appear, also, that the honey-bearers must, as regards the later stages of 
their repletion, be crammed with honey by ordinary workers, as they 
must be quite unable to collect honey for themselves long before their 
extreme limit of abdominal distension is reached. They hang by their 
feet to the roof of special chambers provided deep down in the subter- 
ranean nest. 
Mr. McCook has seen three workers receiving honey from the mouth 
of one of the honey-bearers. He also traced the workers to the place 
where at night they collected the honey, and found that it was not 
derived from aphides, but from exudations on the surface of galls 
growing on the twigs of a dwarf species of oak. Analysis of the honey 
taken from the swollen honey-bearers showed it to be nearly pure 
grape-sugar. Dissection of the honey-bearers showed that the only 
portion of the digestive tract occupied by the honey is the abdominal 
portion of the cesophagus or crop, the other organs being greatly com- 
pressed backward by the hugely-distended crop. ‘The case is, in fact, 
held both by McCook and Forel as simply an extreme exaggeration of 
the habit common to all nectar-loving ants, of swelling the abdomen by 
taking a large quantity of honey into the crop, especially noticeable 
after they have been ‘milking’ the aphides. 
Mr. TRIMEN suggested that the very few cases hitherto met with 
among the very numerous species of ants tended to support the view, 
that conditions of a special and exceptional kind must be at work to 
make it worth while to withdraw from the general labour-strength of 
the community, and convert into living honey-pots, a certain propor- 
tion of the workers, for the most part the larger ones. 
‘Mr. PERINGUEY exhibited a snake, new to the Museum collection, 
and most probably new to science; also some flies (Zachyna sp.), 
which lay their eggs among those of the locusts, thus proving more 
effectual towards the destruction of the migratory locust than they 
would if infesting the locust itself. 
Mr. Bouvs introduced Mr. Schlechter to the meeting, and related at 
length the journey undertaken by the latter in search of botanic 
specimens. He spoke most eulogistically of the results of Mr. 
Schlechter’s investigations. 
