ROADSIDE LIFE. 



ANTS. 



275 



The most abundant of all roadside insects are the 

 ants. Of these there are many kinds, each differing 

 more or less from the others in appearance and in 

 habits, but the following generalizations can be 

 made : — 



All ants are social, many individuals working 

 together to make a common nest. As with the 

 social bees and with the social wasps, each colony of 

 ants consists of three classes of individuals : males, 

 females or queens, and workers. The males and fe- 

 males are winged ; the workers are wingless. The 

 worker class is the one most often observed, this class 

 constituting the greater number of individuals found 

 in any nest. In fact, it is only during a part of the 

 year that winged forms can be found in the nests, 

 although wingless queens are constantly present. 



Often in warm summer afternoons the air will 

 seem to be filled with countless thousands of flying 

 ants. Their moving wings divide the sun's rays into 

 rainbow flashes as they rise or fall, a silent, onward- 

 moving host. This is the wedding journey of the 

 male and female ants, which have come from many 

 communities and have taken flight together. But 

 soon the journey is over and they drop to earth, 

 where the males soon die ; but the females tear off 

 their own wings, having no further use for them, and 

 set about to find places to lay their eggs. Some- 

 times a female starts a new colony ; in other cases 

 she is found by some workers of her own species and 

 adopted as their queen. 



The term Queen, as applied to the individual at 



