634 
THE STUDY OF INSECTS . 
of poor human attempts, and go and study thoroughly the 
nearest ant-hill. There he will find no love for friend or 
wife or child, but a love for everyone. There everything is 
done for the good of the whole, and nothing for the indi¬ 
vidual. The state makes wars, provides food for all, cares 
for the children, owns all the property. He will find no 
complaint against the existing condition of society, no 
rebels; but the fate of each one is determined by the acci¬ 
dent of birth, and each takes up its work without a murmur. 
He will find that this perfect commune has developed 
courage, patriotism, loyalty, and never-failing industry; but 
he will find also that war, pillage, slavery, and an utter dis¬ 
regard of the rights of other communities and individuals 
are as prevalent as they are among our own nations, where 
selfish private ambition has held sway so long. 
There are always three classes of ants in a colony: males, 
females, and workers. The males and the females are winged, 
the workers wingless. Often in warm summer afternoons 
the air will seem to be filled with countless thousands of 
flying ants. Their moving wings divide the sun's rays into 
rainbow flashes as they rise or fall, a silent, onward-moving 
host. This is the wedding-journey of the male and female 
ants, which have come from many communities and have 
taken flight together. But soon the journey is over and 
they drop to earth, where the males soon die; but the 
females tear off their own wings, having no further use for 
them, and set about to find places to lay their eggs. Some¬ 
times a female starts a new colony; in other cases she is 
fe nd by some workers of her own species and adopted as 
their queen. 
Comparatively little is known regarding the formation of 
new colonies of ants. It has been a question whether a 
colony is founded by a single queen working alone, as with 
the bumblebees and social wasps; or whether a queen asso¬ 
ciates a number of workers with herself and they together 
found the colony, as with the Honey-bee. The writer has 
