Nature's craftsmen : popular studies of ants and other insects / by Henry Christopher McCook.

  • Henry Christopher McCook
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nature's craftsmen : popular studies of ants and other insects / by Henry Christopher McCook. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the parent nest, to which none of the outgoers appear to return of their own motion. Nor, indeed, have they the power or ability to do so. In this respect there is a wide difference between winged ants and their cousins the bees and wasps. With the latter, wings are essential to the common life of hive or nest, and are instruments of transit to and fro on communal errands. They there- fore have the gift of locating the home and returning to it on wings. But ants are given wings simply for pre- serving the species, and these organs of flight are used for that alone. This includes the ability to bear the female to a fitting spot wherein to found a new com- munity. She escapes from the hurly-burly, and sees her home nest no more. As for the males, their life-mission ends with or soon after the marriage day, and nothing in nature seems to be kindly concerned about them. They are waste mat- ter in the world of life; like Falstaff’s recruits, mere “food for powder”; that is, prey for ant-destroying creatures, or flotsam and jetsam before the undula- tions of winds which drive their dry carcasses to and fro. Sometimes there is more or less uncertainty in an ant community as to the exact period for the marriage flight. At least, a difference of opinion would seem to arise between the ruling caste and the winged depend- ents. On and near the grounds of Mrs. Mary Treat at Vineland, New Jersey, were some nests of the Sanguine slave-makers (Formica sanguined), in which I became much interested during several visits to that lady, during which we jointly studied the manners of several species. The winged forms began to emerge about the middle of June, and three days thereafter the interior of the glazed