78 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



the recruiting ceases. As soon as a sufficient number of 

 apartments to contain them are prepared, the young brood, 

 with the males and females, are conveyed thither, and the 

 whole business is concluded. When the spot thus selected 

 for their residence is at a considerable distance from the old 

 nest, the ants construct some intermediate receptacles, re- 

 sembling small ant-hills, consisting of a cavity filled with 

 fragments of straw and other materials, in which they form 

 several cells; and here at first they deposit their recruits, 

 males, females, and brood, which they afterwards conduct to 

 the final settlement. These intermediate stations sometimes 

 become permanent nests, which, however, maintain a connec- 

 tion with the capital city. 1 



While the recruiting is proceeding it appears to occasion 

 no sensation in the original nest ; all goes on in it as usual, 

 and the ants that are not yet recruited pursue their ordinary 

 occupations : whence it is evident that the change of station 

 is not an enterprise undertaken by the whole community. 

 Sometimes many neuters set about this business at the same 

 time, which gives a short existence (for in the end they all 

 re-unite into one) to many separate formicaries. If the ants 

 dislike their new city, they quit it for a third, and even for a 

 fourth : and what is remarkable, they will sometimes return 

 to their original one before they are entirely settled in the 

 new station ; when the recruiting goes in opposite directions, 

 and the pairs pass each other on the road. You may stop 

 the emigration for the present, if you can arrest the first re- 

 cruiter, and take away his recruit. 2 



These European emigrations, however, are somewhat in- 

 significant when compared with those which the neuters of 

 some of the tropical species undertake, the extent of which 

 would be incredible if not so well authenticated. M. Lund 

 states that he once followed one of these vast hosts for five 

 days ; and M. Lacordaire informs us that when in Cayenne 



1 Walking one day early in July in a spot where I used to notice a single 

 nest of Formica rufa, I observed that a new colony had been formed of consider- 

 able magnitude ; and between it and the original nest were six or seven smaller 

 settlements. 



2 See Huber, chap. iv. § 3. 



