1 880.] 
89 
A Living Honeycomb. 
described. Not only is the abdomen of the ant converted 
into a receptacle for honey, but the whole internal economy 
of the body is transformed for this purpose. All the organs 
of the abdomen have quite disappeared : viscera, nerves, 
veins, arteries, have alike vanished ; and there remains 
only a thin transparent skin, which is capable of great dis- 
tension. It is thus in reality a honey-cell, and much stranger 
than that of the bee, the waxen walls of the latter being 
replaced in this case by the tissues of a living animal. The 
creature can afford to dispense with the abdominal organs, 
since its life-duties are so metamorphosed that it has hence- 
forth to adl only as an animated sweetmeat. 
Dr. M‘ Cook’s observations enabled him to discover that 
the working ants, returning from their out-door foraging, 
with their bodies distended with the honey they have some- 
where harvested, enter the chambers ot the nest and ejecft 
this sweet fluid from their own mouths into the mouths of 
the honey-bearers, whose bodies become greatly distended 
with the delicious food. In other cases he perceived 
hungry ants seeking for a meal from the food thus gene- 
rously stored up. The honey-bearer seemed to slightly con- 
tract the muscles of the abdominal skin, forcing from its 
mouth minute globules of honey : these clung to the hairs 
of the under lip, and were eagerly lapped up by the hungry 
ants waiting to be fed. It is probable, however, that these 
supplies are principally intended as winter-stores for the 
workers, for the feeding of the larvae, and for the dinner- 
table of the queen, who is, as usual, too proud or too digni- 
fied to do her own foraging. 
The working ants take great care of their helpless honey- 
bearers. When one, through some convulsion of Nature, — 
occasioned perhaps by the tap of a gigantic human finger, 
— looses its hold, and drops to the floor of its chamber, it 
is at once picked up by a worker, and carried back to its old 
foothold on the roof of the apartment. How this minute 
creature can drag up a perpendicular wall a mass twenty 
times its own size and weight is only less surprising than 
it would be to see an adroit climber of the human race 
ascending the face of a precipice and pulling after him a 
ton weight. 
With regard to the source of the honey, these ants are 
not known to feast on flowers, like bees and some of our 
home ants, nor could any evidence be found of the pre- 
sence of the Aphis , or ant-cow, which many of our ants 
milk for its honey. 
VOL. 11. (third series.) 
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