The queen or mother ant
sets up her separate establishment by curling a small leaf or the corner
of a large one, joining the edges with a white cottony fabric, and
forthwith begins to raise a family. She is a portly creature--unlike her
slim, semi-transparent workers and warriors--and most prolific, and her
family increases marvellously. As it multiplies, ingenious additions of
living leaves are made to the pocket or purse, until it may assume the
size of a football and be the home of millions of alert, pugnacious,
inquisitive, foraging insects, whose bites are dreaded by individuals
whose skin is extra sensitive.
Is it not astonishing that insects, possessing even in combination such
trivial muscular power as the green tree-ant, should be able to cause
leaves 12 inches long by 8 inches wide to curl up so that the apex shall
almost touch the base, or that the parallel borders shall be brought
together with the nicest apposition? The astonishment increases when it
is recognised that at the founding of a colony there are but few workers
to co-operate in the undertaking.
The minute caterpillar of a certain species of moth mines leaves, and
eating away the cellular structures, causes them to twist irregularly,
and eventually spins on the spot a cocoon of green silk in which it
undergoes metamorphosis.
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