H YMEN OP TER A. 
633 
bee, building a nest, and when the owner of the nest is off 
collecting provisions steals in and lays its egg, which the 
unconscious owner walls in with her own egg. Sometimes 
the cuckoo-fly larva eats the rightful occupant of the nest, 
and sometimes starves it by eating up the food provided for 
it. The bees and wasps know this foe very well, and tender 
it so warm a reception that the brilliant-coated little rascal 
has reason enough to double itself up so that the righteous 
sting of its assailant can find no hole in its armor. There 
is one instance on record where an outraged wasp, unable 
to sting one of the cuckoo-flies to death, gnawed off her 
wings and pitched her out on the ground. But the un¬ 
daunted invader waited until the wasp departed for provi¬ 
sions, and then crawled up the post and laid her egg in the 
nest before she died. 
Some of the cuckoo-flies are true parasites; one of them 
infests the currant-worm in Europe. It is to be hoped that 
this species will find its way to this country. 
Superfamily FORMICINA (For-mi-ci'na). 
The Ants. 
The ants are easily recognized by the well-known form 
of the body. The only insects that are liable to be mis¬ 
taken for ants are the white-ants or Termites ( Termitida) 
and the velvet-ants {Mutillidce). But the true ants are 
readily distinguished from these and other insects by the 
form of the abdomen. With the ants the first segment of 
the abdomen, and in one family the second also, forms a 
lens-shaped scale or knot, varying in form and 
serving as a peduncle to the remaining por¬ 
tion of this region of the body (Fig. 764). F,c - 
The winged ants are also peculiar in lacking the cup-like 
scale or tegula at the base of each fore wing. 
If the statesman or the philosopher would study a per¬ 
fect communistic society, let him throw away his histories 
