Mr. W. Roberts then read a paper on “Ants” of which the following is an abstract.

“With the exception of the bee, there is no better known or more universally popular than the ant. From the earliest times it has attracted the attention, not only of naturalists, but of philosophers and poets, while it has served the writer of every age to “point his moral” on industry and thrift.

Ants are divided into three families – the Formicidae, Poneridae, and Myrinicidae.

These again comprise many genera, and a large number of species, upwards of a thousand being known. In this country we have over 30 varieties. Like bees, ants are social insects, living in communities, regulated by definite laws, each member of the society bearing a separate and well defined part in the organisation and arrangement of the colony. An ant’s nest contains three kinds of individuals, representing a threefold distinction of sex.

There are the workers or neuters, males, and females or grums. The males have four delicately formed and transparent wings. The queen may be distinguished by her larger size and greater expansion of wing. The workers never have wings. In most species of ants, the workers and females posses a sting, but in some varieties, they are absent, in these cases they are provided with poison glands containing venomous fluid known to chemists as formic acid, which they have the power to eject with considerable force, and to a great distance, as a weapon of defense when attacked by enemies.

The workers constitute the majority of the population of the colony, and they perform all the duties that contribute to the welfare of the community. They build the nest and keep it in repair: they provide all the food; they attend to the hatching and rearing of the young; and they defend the nest against depredation and carry on aggressive warfare. It has recently been discovered that the latter functions are performed by workers that exceed the others greatly in size and armament, whose duties are exclusively to act as soldiers of the community, an office for which their size and powerful mandibles admirably adapt them.

The ant colony is not established by swarming as is the case with bees – either the queens join an old nest, or they associate themselves with a number of workers, and with their assistance commence a new nest, or they found new nests for themselves. Should no queen join an old nest voluntarily the workers set forth in search of some which they take prisoner and conduct to the nest, removing their wings to prevent their escape. Sentinels are also posted to watch their movement and prevent their escape.

When the queen commences to lay eggs, all restraint is removed and a universal gladness spreads through the nest. A crowd of courtiers attend her, offering food, caressing her with their mandibles, and carrying her about their city. Much of the time of the workers is occupied in attention to the eggs and larvae for which they evince the greatest devotion. Immediately the eggs are laid they are collected and placed in heaps, moistened with their tongues and carried to warmer or cooler situations in the nest as the weather may render needful. They spare neither time, labour, nor their own lives in their care and protection of the helpless larvae. They have an instinctive knowledge of the precise moment when the insect will be disclosed of, they mount upon the cocoon and carefully open the silken envelope where the head lies and gently extricate the prisoner.

The ants nest, or formicary, varies much in form and material, scarcely two species build alike. Clay, earth, and vegetable matter are the chief materials employed, and excavations under ground and erections above ground, in trees, walls, or house roofs are the most common situation of nests. The general plan shows an arrangement of flats or storers connected throughout by passages and supported by pillars. A store with saloons, vaulted roofs, partitions and galleries will be completed in seven or eight hours. The engineering skill of ants is exhibited in constructing roads, when such obstacles as stones are removed, grass and herbage mown down, cuttings are made and even arched over so as to form covered ways. They also excavate subterranean tunnels, sometimes under a stream of water, when they will commence operations exactly at the right spot to time the proper gradients.

Ants are capable of communicating to each other their ideas and wishes. They do not emit any sound, but by signs and signals communicate by touching each other with their antennae. Fierce and bloody wars are of frequent occurrence in ant life, when the opposing hordes fight with desperate courage, the battle continuing for days together, and only cease when the combatants are separated by heavy rains. Certain tribes of ants keep slaves in captivity. The masters are red in colour, while the slaves are black, and so are called negroes.

Regular slave-hunting expeditions are organised, the habitations of the negro ants are attacked, and the captives carried off in triumph. Some of slave-making ants compel their slaves to do all the work usually done by the workers, even to feeding them and carrying them upon their backs, and they have even been known to die of starvation when deprived of their slaves. Ants feed upon both animal and vegetable substances. They destroy large numbers of caterpillars and small insects, and so are very beneficial to plants.

They are particularly fond of saccharine matter, and many species feed largely upon the sweet fluid known as honey dew, which is exuded from the bodies of aphids or plant lice. To obtain this, the ants actually have the power by certain movements of the antennae, of inducing the aphids to emit the fluid, thus making them their milch cattle. They also keep the aphids in captivity, enclosing them in earthen huts or cow sheds which are frequently connected with a paddock. Not only do they care for the adult aphids, but the eggs are the object of their attention.

They recognise the importance of the preservation of the eggs, so as to secure a supply of food, and when the aphids kept in captivity have laid their eggs they are collected and treated with the greatest care, and when the period of hatching arrives they are carried forth from the nests and carefully deposited on the food plants of the insect.

It has been stated that ants do not harvest their food in the summer, as stated by Solomon. But the observations of these making the statements have not extended beyond the British Isles. It is true that British ants do not lay up stores for the winter. But the tropical countries and in warmer parts of Europe ants do harvest grain in the manner alluded to by the wise man.”