THE HONEY ANT. 19 
great’ majority), males, and perfect females. There 
are, however, often several queens in an ants’ nest; 
while, as we all know, there is never more than one 
queen mother in a hive. The queens of ants are pro- 
vided with wings, but after a single flight they tear 
them off, and do not again quit the nest. In ad- 
dition to the ordinary workers there is in some species 
a second, or rather a third, form of female. In almost 
any ants’ nest we may see that the workers differ more 
or less in size. The amount of difference, however, 
depends upon the species. In Lasius niger, the small 
brown garden ant, the workers are, for instance, much 
more uniform than in the little yellow meadow ant, 
or in Atta barbara (PI. II. figs. 1 and 2), where some 
of them are much more than twice as large as others. 
But in certain ants there are differences still more re- 
markable. Thus, ina Mexican species, Myrmecocystus,! 
besides the common workers, which have the form of 
ordinary neuter ants, there are certain others in which 
the abdomen is swollen into an immense sub-diapha- 
nous sphere. These individuals are very inactive, and 
principally as living honey-jars. I have described in a 
subsequent page a species of Oamponotus (Pl. IV. 
fig. 1) from Australia, which presents us with the same 
remarkable phenomenon. In the genus Pheidole (Pl. 
II. figs. 3 and 4), very common in southern Europe, 
there are also two distinct forms without any interme- 
diate gradations; one with heads of the usual propor- 
1 Wesmael, Bull. Acad. Roy. Bruxelles, vol. v. p. 771. 
