HOUSE ANTS 
33 
hedgehog is one of the deep sleepers, and it is best, if you have a 
good garden, to turn him out to make his own warm and com- 
fortable nest, which with the aid of leaves he will do beneath 
some thick-set hedge, or at the root of a tree. “ There he 
sleeps, through many an evil day, until the spring, never 
waking, never eating, but like the bear, burning his own fat.”* 
Charles F. W. T. Williams, M.A. 
HOUSE ANTS. 
HE season has reappeared when the ant is again in 
evidence either in the cupboard or on the garden seat. 
It may be well then if we now try to learn something 
about these social insects, though they are a nuisance. 
We have in all three families of them, and of these it may be 
said that one of them bites but does not sting, while the other 
two sting as well as bite. The large smooth reddish wood ant, 
which forms large mound-nests in woods, represents the family 
that bites only. The red ants which infest our gardens repre- 
sent those that both bite and sting, as no doubt many can vouch 
for from personal experience. 
In houses little black, or red, or yellow ants are the common 
nuisances. None of these can be said to be actually destructive 
to household effects, but they annoy from the mere fact of their 
presence and their faculty of “ getting into ” articles of food, 
particularly sugar or anything sweet. Having once gained 
access to a store of this sort the news of the discovery is at once 
conveyed to the colony, and in an incredibly short time the 
premises are swarming with these unwelcome visitors. 
In habits and life-history these ants are all much alike, and 
in common with other social insects show us a most complex 
form of communal life with its division of labour accompanied 
by diversity of forms of individuals ; yet all working together 
in the most perfect harmony and accord. As is pre-eminently 
the case in the social species of insects, the female is the pre- 
dominant sex, and the specimens ordinarily seen in houses are 
wingless and imperfectly developed females called workers or 
neuters. 
In the colony itself, if it be discovered and opened, will be 
found numbers of these large wingless females, and at the 
proper season, limited numbers of winged males and females. 
During most of the year, however, the colony consists almost 
exclusively of workers with one or more perfect wingless females. 
In summer the ants swarm and winged males and females are 
produced, and almost immediately they fly away and pair, after 
“ The Natural History of the Year ” (p. 223), by J. Arthur Thomson. 
