miniature precipices and into Lilliputian crevices 

 in their blind determination to tear off the wings. 

 Again they seem to use their legs as though trying 

 to twist off a wing. It is the most fanatical per- 

 formance to be witnessed among insedts. 



Such dogged persistence must sooner or later 

 attain its end, and presently the ant is seen running 

 about wingless or perhaps with only a torn stub 

 left. The behavior is no longer frantic as before, 

 but she now moves about as if enjoying great 

 relief. During one such flight great numbers came 

 down into a gravelly path through a huckleberry 

 patch. They apparently avoided the bushes on 

 either hand, and chose to alight in the path, for 

 it was alive with ants twisting and turning and 

 wriggling upon their backs in the gravel. Others, 

 having gotten rid of their wings, were attempting 

 to go head foremost into the ground, possibly with 

 a view of laying their eggs, or merely because the 

 soil was their natural element. 



Around the formicary itself the workers were 

 grouped en masse, endeavoring either to restrain 

 the new brood of queens in the old colony or to 

 coerce them into leaving. They appeared to drive 

 them as a squad of police might force back a 



99 



