Wasps, Bees, and Ants 
539 
of knowing the exact facts with regard to this matter will be appreciated 
when the reader comes to the later discussion of the probable origin of the 
various castes in the communal insect species. The adult ants feed on a 
variety of substances, both animal and vegetable, almost all, however, having 
a special taste for sweetish liquids, such as the secreted honey-dew of plant- 
lice, scale-insects, certain small beetles and others, and the sugary sap of cer¬ 
tain trees. The males and fertile females are fed by the workers. 
Besides feeding the larvae, the nurses have to see that the young enjoy 
suitable temperature and humidity of the atmosphere; this is accomplished 
by moving the larvae or pupae from room to room, farther below the sur¬ 
face, up nearer the surface, or even out into the warm sunshine above 
ground. The carrying about of ants’ “eggs,” which are not eggs but 
usually the cocooned pupae, by the workers, is a familiar sight around any 
ant-nest, particularly a disturbed one. The various special industries under¬ 
taken by ants, as the attendance on and care of honey-dew-secreting plant- 
lice, the fungus-growing in their nests, the harvesting (but not planting!) 
of food-seeds, the waging of wars for pillage or slave-making, the long migra¬ 
tions, etc., etc., all more or less familiar through much true and some inaccu¬ 
rate popular writing, will be referred to in what detail our space permits in 
the later descriptions of the life of certain interesting species of American 
ants. 
In any community there may live at one time several (two to thirty) 
queens with wings removed. In small colonies there is, however, usually 
but one. As already mentioned, winged ants are to be seen only at certain 
times in the year. When a brood of sexual individuals (males and females) 
is matured in the community, these winged forms issue on a sudden impulse 
(comparable in a way with the outwinging ecstasy of bees at swarming- 
time) from all the openings of the nest and take wing. The air may be 
swarming with them, flights from neighboring nests intermingling and joining. 
This is the mating flight, and after it is over and those ants which have 
escaped the bird attacks and other dangers attending this bold essay into the 
outer world alight or fall exhausted to the ground, the males soon die, while 
the females pull the wings from the body and get under cover. In the com¬ 
munal nest, therefore, winged ants are rarely found. The life of the workers 
of most ant species is conspicuously longer than that of other social insect 
workers: they live for from one to three or four or even five years. Lub¬ 
bock has kept workers until six years old, and queens until seven. The 
males all die young, but both other kinds of individuals are exceptionally 
long-lived for insects. 
About two hundred species of North American ants constituting the 
superfamily Formicina or Formicoidea are comprised in three principal 
families. Some authors recognize five or six families, but it is doubtful if 
