39^ 



AN EC 0X0 MIC EXTOMOLOGY, 



The ploughing should be deep and as thoroughly done as pos- 

 sible, so as to not only disturb and break up the nests com- 

 pletely, but to scatter the plant-lice, eggs, or other material that 

 the ants may have gathered. By this simple means injury may 

 frequently be prevented during the year following. 



Incidentally it has been mentioned that some species of ants 

 gather honey and store it ; and, curiously enough, instead of 

 building cells for its reception, as do the bees, a special form of 



Fig. 451. 



Honey-ants, Myrmecocystus melliger, filled with honey. 



worker is developed, with an unusually elastic crop and abdo- 

 men. These specimens are simply stuffed by the other workers 

 until they become of the size of a small cherry, utterly helpless 

 and incapable of motion. In this condition they cling to the 

 walls of the nest until, in the course of time, their stock is used up, 

 when they again resume activity. 



Three of the other ant families to which reference has been 

 made contain no species of particular interest to the farmer, how- 

 ever interesting they may be to the student. 



But in the family Myrmicidce we again find species that are 

 numerous and of more or less importance to man. Here the 

 petiole of the abdomen is tw^o-jointed, differing thus from the 

 other important family, Formicid<z. Many of the species have 

 the sting well developed in workers and " queens," and are for- 

 midable creatures by reason of this weapon ; but not all our forms 

 are so furnished, as is known by those who have suffered from an 

 invasion of small red ants in houses. This little creature, Mono- 

 morium pharao7iis, sometimes occurs in myriads, and nothing is 



