HYMENOPTERA 369 



present it to their larvae. As " pirates of the air," however, they require 

 to be swift and nimble in their movements (why? give examples), whence 

 we also find them possessed of a long and slender body, and very movable 

 abdomen attached by a thin stalk (wasp-like waist). Wasps do not 

 collect pollen or honey, hence the lingua is much shorter in these insects 

 than in honey-bees or humble-bees, and the structural arrangements 

 which adapt the latter for collecting these materials are wanting in them. 

 (Enter into this more fully.) The conspicuous colours of wasps (black, 

 with yellow spots) must be regarded, as in the spotted salamander (which 

 see) , as a danger-signal for insect-eating birds ; and indeed, with the 

 exception of parasites and the honey buzzards, wasps seem to have no 

 enemies, no other animal being desirous of making closer acquaintance 

 with the sting of these insects. The sting of the largest of our wasps, 

 the Hornet (V. crabro), is specially dreaded, but the familiar fruit-loving 

 Common Wasp (V. vulgaris) can also inflict a very painful sting. 

 (Why cannot wasps, however, be slow-moving creatures like others 

 which possess warning colours ?) 



The Red Ant {Formica rvfa). 

 (With a brief consideration of ants generally.) 



A. The Societies of Ants. 



If on a fine sunny day in summer we walk into a pine-wood and visit 

 the hills of the red ant, we may, if fortunate, observe an interesting 

 episode of life in Nature. The busy crowd of ants with which we have 

 already become acquainted will be found to have undergone a consider- 

 able increase in numbers, the thousands of reddish-brown, wingless 

 insects we have seen previously having now been joined by a large 

 number of somewhat larger (about f inch) winged creatures, which 

 exactly resemble a small wasp. They are the young females and males, 

 who are getting ready for their nuptial flight (see bee). Collecting in 

 large clouds, they now rise and swarm around the trees of the wood. 

 On returning to earth the males usually soon die ; the females (queens), 

 of which there are several in each colony, either become the ancestral 

 mothers of new colonies or return to their old nest, which they do not 

 quit again. For this reason, soon after their return they lose their 

 wings, which in the narrow and crooked streets of the ant village would 

 only be an impediment. 



The smaller wingless animals (| to J inch) are the working females, 

 the untiring labourers in the ant dwellings, whom the Bible points out 

 as an example to the idle (Prov. vi. 6 ; the German for ant, Die Ameise 



