230 INJURIOUS AND USEFUL INSECTS 



seek shelter. Now and then, it would appear, one is permitted 

 to join a colony already existing ; cases are also known in which 

 a female has entered the ground, laid eggs, and reared workers. 

 The great majority, even of the females, perish of starvation, 

 or are eaten by birds. One ant-hill may contain a number of 

 queens, which live peaceably together. The workers perform 

 all the ordinary work of the community, constructing and 

 defending the ant-hill, collecting food, and rearing the young. 

 Many ants dig their nests in the earth ; a few build as well as 

 excavate. Some common English ants raise a dome over 

 the nest, and cover the dome with little sticks and fallen 

 pine-needles. Ants devour insects, fruit, the honey of plants, 

 and the honey-dew of aphids ; some may almost be said to 

 cultivate plants for food; thus the harvesting ant of Texas 

 feeds upon the seeds of Aristida ("ant-rice"), and allows no 

 other plant but this to grow upon cleared spaces near the nest; 

 some ants of southern Europe lay up grain for the winter, and 

 know how to hinder it from germinating in the damp, under- 

 ground granaries. The worker, having collected and perhaps 

 partly digested some food, can regurgitate a part to feed the 

 larvae, the queens, or even other inmates of the ant-hill, 

 which are not ants at all. Particular species of ants exhibit 

 very remarkable instincts. A few make slaves of the workers 

 of other species ; some may be said to have domesticated 

 aphids for the sake of their honey-dew. 



Ants have acted upon the structure of many flowering 

 plants, though far less powerfully than bees and moths. 

 Being unable to fly, the honey-loving worker-ant can only 

 creep from flower to flower, and if allowed free access, would 

 nearly always transfer the pollen to another flower on the 

 same plant. Such close fertilisation does not meet the wants 

 of the plant, which requires cross fertilisation. Further, the 

 ant, being accustomed to nip with its jaws any object which is 

 passed into its lurking place, would soon deter bees and 

 moths, the visitors which are really profitable to the plant, 

 from exploring the flowers. It is therefore best that the 

 plant should exclude ants altogether, or at least hinder their 

 access to the flowers. Sticky glands, slippery and inclined 

 surfaces, moats of water, self-closing or very narrow corollas 

 are among the devices which hinder the honey-loving ant from 

 rifling the flowers which it cannot benefit in return. In hot 



