Indeed, when we consider that there are certain species of beetles which
have never been found anywhere except in ants' nests, it appears highly
probable that these domesticated forms have been produced by the ants
themselves, exactly as the dog, the sheep, and the cow, in their
existing types, have been produced by deliberate human selection. If
this be so, then there is nothing very out-of-the-way in the idea that
the ants have also produced the honey-tubes of aphides by their long
selective action. It must be remembered that ants, in point of
antiquity, date back, under one form or another, no doubt to a very
remote period of geological time. Their immense variety of genera and
species (over a thousand distinct kinds are known) show them to be a
very ancient family, or else they would not have had time to be
specially modified in such a wonderful multiformity of ways. Even as
long ago as the time when the tertiary deposits of Oeningen and
Radoboj were laid down, Dr. Heer of Zurich has shown that at least
eighty-three distinct species of ants already existed; and the number
that have left no trace behind is most probably far greater. Some of the
beetles and woodlice which ants domesticate in their nests have been
kept underground so long that they have become quite blind--that is to
say, have ceased altogether to produce eyes, which would be of no use to
them in their subterranean galleries; and one such blind beetle, known
as Claviger, has even lost the power of feeding itself, and has to be
fed by its masters from their own mandibles.
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