Ants; Their Structure, Development and Behavior (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ...horizontal passages about a foot in length lead off from the main shaft, at the end of which were three or four of the honey ants, while the bottom of the main shaft, which is excavated into a larger cavity, contained a considerable number. The 'honey ants' are quite incapable of movement and must be fed by the workers. Unlike all the other ants noticed in this country, they did not appear to collect twigs, leaves or grass to carry into their burrows." 5. Myrmecocystus melliger, mexicanus and horti-deorum.--The genus Myrmecocystus s. str. is confined to Xorth America, ranging over the deserts and dry plains from the City of Mexico to Denver, Colo. Two species have been recognized, melliger and mexicanus, with some eight subspecies and varieties (Wheeler, io i8rf). Most of these are highly insectivorous and show no tendency to form repletes, but the var. horti-deorum (Figs. 217-219), of New Mexico and Colorado, is known to have repletes like those of the species mexicanus to which it belongs. The repletes of Myrmecocystus, which have long been esteemed as an article of food by the Indians of Mexico and the Southwestern States, were first described by Llave (1832) in an obscure Mexican periodical from Mexican specimens, but it is impossible to determine the species to which he referred. Wesmael (1838) also based M. mexicanus on Mexican specimens. Both of these authors described the nests of the ants merely from hearsay. Later various, more or less erroneous, observations on the var. horti-deorum were made at Santa Fe, N. M., by Captain W. B. Fleeson (Edwards, 1873), Saunders (1875) and Loew (1874). The first to publish a trustworthy account of this, or in fact of any of our Myrmecocysti, was McCook (18826). He discovered horti-deorum in...