50 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
which your partiality to your friend may, perhaps, in- 
duce you to think not wholly devoid of interest,—that it 
has been my fortune to make. 
The societies of ants, as also of other Hymenoptera, 
differ from those of the Termites in having inactive lar- 
vee and pupee, the neuters or workers combining in them- 
selves both the military and civil functions, Besides the 
helpless larvae and pupa, which have no locomotive 
powers, these societies consist of females, males, and 
workers. The office of the females, at their first exclu- 
sion distinguished by a pair of ample wings, (which how- 
ever, as you have heard, they soon cast,) is the founda- 
tion of new colonies, and the furnishing of a constant 
supply of eggs for the maintenance of the population in 
the old nests as well as in the new. These are usually 
the least numerous part of the community?. The 
office of the males, which are also winged, and at the 
time of swarming are extremely numerous, is merely the 
impregnation of the females: after the season for this is 
passed, they die. Upon the workers” devolves, except 
in nascent colonies, all the work, as well as the defence 
of the community, of which they are the most numerous 
portion. In some societies of ants the workers are of 
two dimensions.—In the nests of F. rufa and flava such 
* Gould says that the males and females are nearly equal in num- 
ber, p. 62; but from Huber’s observations it seems to follow that the 
former are most numerous, p. 96. 
» That the neuter ants, like those of the hive-bee, are imperfectly 
organized females, appears from the following observation of M. Hu- 
ber (Nouv. Observ. §c. ii. 443.)— Les fourmis nous ont encore offert 
% cet égard une analogie trés frappante ; 4 la vérité, nous n’avons ja- 
mais vu pondre les ouvriéres, mais nous avons été témoins de leur 
accouplement. Ce fait pourroit étre attesté par plusieurs membres 
