MARVELS OF ANT LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 129, 1 June 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

MARVELS OF ANT LIFE.

A. paper on ants, by M. Charles Janet, published by the French Soeiete Zoologique, is very, interesting reading-. M. Janet has studied the ant's ways in Europe and America. He finds the Mexican ants very adthey want to let it out. M. Janet has in their communities puzzle him, and he wonders whether they are notformed by ants sentenced' to hard labour for life. They are as large as force-meat balls, are hollow inside, and contain honey. Let them fall as they may, they can walk, for the ants forming- them keep their legs outside. They adhere so closely to each other that no honey escapes unless when they want t let it ut. M. Janet has been able to watch an ant queen under a magnifying- glass. She is brought up like a queen bee, and is treated "as the hope of the community. She has « good time in this phase of her life. Her nuptials also are similar to that of the queen bee, and are followed by a _ massacre of the specialised suitors. Her subsequent function is one of constant reproduction. Thirty eggs are laid in an hour. She has a staff of nurses round her who attend to her with the most minute attention, feed her, and take the eggs to the nursery. She never stops laying, and may go on for twelve years. The attendant ants do not let her move, and tie her body down with vegetable fibres. When she dies a squad of tiny insects of another race—the loelaps, M. Janet calls them—are broug-ht in to eat the body. All the nurses°stand round. These insects are like the dogs in Oriental cities. There are no burying- places in or near an ant-hill.