Gilbert's discontented sugar-broker, who laid on
flesh and 'adipose deposit' until he became converted at last into a
perfect rolling ball of globular humanity.
The manners of the honey-ant race are very simple. Most of the members
of each community are active and roving in their dispositions, and show
no tendency to undue distension of the nether extremities. They go out
at night and collect nectar or honey-dew from the gall-insects on
oak-trees; for the gall-insect, like love in the old Latin saw, is
fruitful both in sweets and bitters, _melle et felle_. This nectar they
then carry home, and give it to the rotunds or honey-bearers, who
swallow it and store it in their round abdomen until they can hold no
more, having stretched their skins literally to the very point of
bursting. They pass their time, like the Fat Boy in 'Pickwick,' chiefly
in sleeping, but they cling upside down meanwhile to the roof of their
residence. When the workers in turn require a meal, they go up to the
nearest honey-bearer and stroke her gently with their antennae. The
honey-bearer thereupon throws up her head and regurgitates a large drop
of the amber liquid. ('Regurgitates' is a good word which I borrow from
Dr. McCook, of Philadelphia, the great authority upon honey-ants; and it
saves an immense deal of trouble in looking about for a respectable
periphrasis.) The workers feed upon the drops thus exuded, two or three
at once often standing around the living honey-jar, and lapping nectar
together from the lips of their devoted comrade.
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