^76 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
There is, however, one thing she does not do with 
her mandibles ; she does not chew with them, but 
uses them to tear and press the food so as to obtain 
the juices and oils in it. It is true many ants feed 
upon other insects, and even on grains, but in the 
first case they pierce the skin with the mandibles, 
and then lap up the liquid within, and the seeds they 
tear to fragments, and lick or rasp off the starch with 
their tiny tongue (/, Fig. 92), helped by the inner jaws 
Such, then, is roughly the structure of the working 
ant, which is an imperfect female ; and when we ask 
how it is that so small a creature, with a body not 
one-tenth part as strong as many of the beetles, and 
without the power of flying, has made its way so well 
in the world, we learn that within that curious- 
shaped head is collected a larger and more complex 
mass of nerve-matter than in other insects, so that in 
the two large hemispheres of an ant's brain, life has 
prepared a powerful machine for guiding the little 
creature on its road. In all social insects, such as 
the bees and wasps, the nerve-masses in the brain 
are larger than in those insects which do their work 
alone, and one great secret of the success of ants 
is that they form the most perfect societies in the 
whole animal world. 
And now, how shall we study ant-life ? For 
there are as many different races of ants, each with 
its special habits and customs, as there are races 
of men, and one description will by no means do 
for them all. The best way will be to speak first 
of some one race well known to all of us, and then 
to say something of others. It would seem most 
