Sir John
Lubbock found that his yellow ants carried the winter eggs of a species
of aphis into their nest, and there took great care of them. In the
spring, the eggs hatched out; and the ants actually carried the young
aphides out of the nest again, and placed them on the leaves of a daisy
growing in the immediate neighbourhood. They then built up a wall of
earth over and round them. The aphides went on in their usual lazy
fashion throughout the summer, and in October they laid another lot of
eggs, precisely like those of the preceding autumn. This case, as the
practised observer himself remarks, is an instance of prudence
unexampled, perhaps, in the animal kingdom, outside man. 'The eggs are
laid early in October on the food-plant of the insect. They are of no
direct use to the ants; yet they are not left where they are laid,
exposed to the severity of the weather and to innumerable dangers, but
brought into their nests by the ants, and tended by them with the utmost
care through the long winter months until the following March, when the
young ones are brought out again and placed on the young shoots of the
daisy.' Mr. White of Stonehouse has also noted an exactly similar
instance of formican providence.
The connection between so many ants and so many species of the aphides
being so close and intimate, it does not seem extravagant to suppose
that the honey-tubes in their existing advanced form at least may be due
to the deliberate selective action of these tiny insect-breeders.
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