ANTS — KEEPING APHIDES. 
63 
on the young shoots of the daisy. This seems to me a most 
remarkable case of prudence. Our ants may not perhaps lay 
up food for the winter, but they do more, for they keep during 
six months the eggs which will enable them to procure food 
during the following summer. 
The following, which is taken from Buchner’s 
6 Greistesleben der Thiere ’ is perhaps a still more striking 
performance of the same kind as that which Sir John 
Lubbock observed : — • 
The author is debtor to Herr NTottebohm, Inspector of Build- 
ings at Karlsruhe, who related the following on May 24, 1876, 
under the title, 4 Ants as Founders of Aphides’ Colonies : ’ — 4 Of 
:wo equally strong young weeping ashes, which I planted in my 
garden at Kattowitz, in Upper Silesia, one succeeded well, and 
in about five or six years showed full foliage, while the other 
regularly every year was covered, when it began to bud, with 
millions of aphides, which destroyed the young leaves and 
sprouts, and thus completely delayed the development of the 
tree. As I perceived that the only reason for this was the 
action of the aphides, 1 determined to destroy them utterly. 
So in the March of the following year I took the trouble to 
clean and wash every bough, sprig, and bud before the bursting 
of the latter, with the greatest care, by means of a syringe. The 
result was that the tree developed perfectly healthy and vigor- 
ous leaves and young shoots, and remained quite free from the 
aphides until the end of May or the beginning of June. My 
joy was of short duration. One fine sunny morning I saw a 
surprising number of ants running quickly up and down the 
trunk of the tree ; this aroused my attention, and led me to 
look more closely. To my great astonishment I then saw that 
many troops of ants were busied in carrying single aphides up 
the stem to the top, and that in this way many of the lower 
leaves had been planted with colonies of aphides. After some 
weeks the evil was as great as ever. The tree stood alone on 
the grass plot, and offered the only situation for an aphides’ 
colony for the countless ants there present. I had destroyed 
this colony; but the ants replanted it by bringing new colonists 
from distant branches, and setting them on the young leaves.. 1 
Again — 
MacCook noticed, of the mound-making ants, that of the 
1 Loo, cit . p. 121. 
6 
