THE HONEY ANT. 19 



great majorily), males, and perfect females. There I 

 are, however, often several queens in an ants' nestij 

 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 diflfer 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, in a Mexican species, Myrmecocystua^ 

 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, lliese individuals are very inactive, and 

 principally as living honey-jars. I have described in a 

 subsequent page a species of Gamponotus (PI. IV, 

 fig. 1) from Australia, which presents us with the same 

 remarkable phenomenon. In the genus Pheidole (PI. 

 II. figs. 3 and 4), very common in southern Euroje, 

 there are also two distinct forms without any interme-l 

 diate gradations ; one with heads of the usual proper* I 

 • Wesmael, Sull. Acad. Roy. Brmcellet, vol, v. p. 771. 



