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 aphis. The
common brown garden-ant, one of the darkest skinned among our English
races, 'devotes itself principally to aphides which frequent twigs and
leaves'; especially, so far as I have myself observed, the bright green
aphis 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 live 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.
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