. Falling in love [microform] : with other essays on more exact branches of science. Science; Science. 'H i i I. 166 HONEY-DEW secreting organs, perhaps under the peculiar agency of the ants, who have regularly appropriated so many kinds of aphides as miniature milch cows. So completely have some species of ants come to recognise their own proprietary interest in the persons of the aphides, that they provide them with fences and cow- sheds on the most approved human pattern. Sometimes they build up covered galleries to protect their tiny cattle; and these galleries lead from the nest to the pl
. Falling in love [microform] : with other essays on more exact branches of science. Science; Science. 'H i i I. 166 HONEY-DEW secreting organs, perhaps under the peculiar agency of the ants, who have regularly appropriated so many kinds of aphides as miniature milch cows. So completely have some species of ants come to recognise their own proprietary interest in the persons of the aphides, that they provide them with fences and cow- sheds on the most approved human pattern. Sometimes they build up covered galleries to protect their tiny cattle; and these galleries lead from the nest to the place where the aphides are fixed, and completely enclose the little creatures from all chance of harm. If intruders try to attack the farmyard, the ants drive them away by biting and lacerating them. Sir John Lubbock, who has paid great attention to the mutual relations of ants and aphides, has even shown that various kinds of ants domesticate various species of apbis. The common brown garden-ant, one of the darkest skinned among our English races, * devot'js itself principally to aphides which frequent twigs and leaves'; especially, so far as I have myself observed, the bright green aphiFi of the rose, and the closely allied little black aphis of the broad bean. On the other hand a nearly related reddish ant pays attention chiefly to those aphides which hve on the bark of trees, while the yellow meadow-ants, a far more subterranean species, keep flocks and herds of the like-minded aphides which feed upon the roots of herbs and grasses. Sir John Lubbock, indeed, even suggests—and how the suggestion would have charmed * Civilisation ' Buckle !— that to this difference of food and habit the distinctive colours of the various species may very probably be due. The ground which he adduces for this ingenious idea is a capital example of the excellent use to which out-of-the- way evidence may be cleverly put by a competent evolu- tionary thinker. * The Baltic amber,' he says, ' con
Size: 930px × 2689px
Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthoral, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectscience
