ANTS AND THEIR HELPLESS CHILDREN. 287 
they swarm everywhere, and have great struggles for 
their homes, and their flocks of aphides. Indeed, 
among ants, as among uncivilised human races, each 
member is faithful to his tribe and bitterly hostile to 
any stranger. Sir J. Lubbock has found that after 
a separation of fifteen months an ant belonging to 
the nest was recognised and welcomed, while a 
stranger was hustled and turned away ; and what 
is still more curious, when ant -eggs were taken to 
another nest, and the young ones hatched there and 
brought up by strange nurses, yet their own people 
recognised and received them when they were re- 
turned to their home. 
The little black ant of our gardens has learnt a 
cunning way of keeping out of the way of quarrels by 
hiding her honey-cows. Instead of going out to seek 
them every day, she carries them home and keeps 
them close to her nest, where she sometimes surrounds 
the stem on which they live with a tube of earth, or 
visits them by covered galleries, or even puts them on 
the roots of plants, underground in her own home 
You may discover this little ant climbing the plants, 
and tempting the aphides to give out their sweet 
drops ; and by carefully digging up the plants near 
her nest, you may find the plant-lice clinging to the 
roots, which run through her galleries and her cham- 
bers. Only, it may be well to put them back again 
to their industrious keepers, and you will probably be 
rewarded by seeing the ants take them up, and carry 
them down for safety to a lower part of the nest. 
The small yellow meadow-ant* keeps her aphides 
entirely on the roots of plants, fetching and placing 
* Lasius flavus. 
