It is an organization of females, too. The workers are females, the soldiers are females, the nurses are females, and there is one queen mother for them all, who lays all the eggs of the colony. Where are the males, those representatives of society, those voters of our human colonies? They do not exist as such, for the males of ant colonies are but mates for the young queens. Together with them they leave the nest on their marriage day and together make the marriage flight, but as soon as this is over they die, and the colony gets on easily without them. To man, who is the most rapidly evolving organism on the earth today, it is a strange thought that the most highly developed insect which the world has produced, and which has not changed materially since the Tertiary epoch, has relegated the males to the short-lived function of reproduction, leaving him no work to perform and getting rid of him as quickly as possible. Why did the ants, with their marvelous instincts, fail to conquer the world? Why have they stood still for thousands of years after they had perfected their social organization? Did they go as far as evolution could go when it leaves the male out of account? It is perhaps a comfort to think that, after all, they have failed and the man-guided organization of human beings has surpassed them in its development! [Illustration] A BLACK ANT It is strange to think that just because the sunlight which poured upon this little creature's shiny body was reflected back against a photographic plate, its rays being made to diverge widely in so doing, we can get an image of this tiny ant as large as though it were a mouse. What a world this would be to us had we microscopic vision! A thousand times as many beasts to look at, a thousand times as many things to see and understand! [Illustration] ANT GATHERING NECTAR FROM LEAF NECTARIES OF THE CHINESE WOOD-OIL TREE A year ago I planted in my garden in Maryland three young wood-oil trees from the Yangtse valley of China, broad-leaved trees something like the catalpa. Just where the leaf stem joined the leaf blade there were two curious, dark red, oval glands. The use of these I did not understand until one morning I discovered a big black ant on each leaf, and each ant was stationed at the base of its leaf near these glands and evidently was lapping up from them small drops of nectar which kept oozing out from the center of each gland. These rapidly-walking little creatures, which spend their time roaming everywhere, had discovered the use of these nectar glands although they were on the leaves of a plant which they had never seen before.