HYMENOPTERA. 381 
Ants have a slim body on long legs. The workers are stouter 
and smaller than the males; and these last are smaller than the 
females. The males have large and prominent eyes, whilst the 
eyes of the workers and females are small. 
Ants are provided with antenne, bent in the form of an 
elbow, with which they examine everything they meet, and 
which seem to assist them in the communication of their ideas. 
Two horny, very strong mandibles serve them at the same time as 
pincers, tweezers, scissors, pick-axe, fork, and sword. <A. thin, 
short neck joins the head to the thorax, to which, in the case of 
the males and females, are attached four large veiny wings. The 
workers only have no wings. Of the three pair of legs, the 
hind ones are the longest. Hach pair is armed with a spur, 
and fringed with very short hairs, which serve the purpose of 
brushes. The abdomen, fat, short, oval, or square, is always most 
voluminous in the females. 
There are three genera of ants which we shall mention. The 
Myrmice have two knobs to the pedicle, by which the abdomen is 
attached to the thorax; the Ponere only one. In these two 
genera, the females and the neuters have a sting, and the larvee 

Fig. 359.—Red ant. Male magnified Fig. 360.—Red ant. Worker magnified 
: (Myrmica rufa). (Myrmica rufa). 
‘do not spin a cocoon in which to change into pupa. Lastly, 
the Formice, ants properly so called, have but one knob on the 
pedicle of the abdomen, as in Ponera ; their larvee spin a silky 
‘cocoon. They have no sting, but they pour into the wounds 
‘made by their mandibles an acid liquor, the pungent smell of 
which is well known. This liquid is formic acid; a natural pro- 
duct which the chemist now-a-days knows how to make artificially, 

