army to protect its leaves from the attacks of herbivorous mammals and insects.”[81] As for the honey or honey-pot ants, they were first heard of in America, and various floating stories, which seemed more or less hard to credit, having got into circulation about them, without there being any positive knowledge to check them, Dr. McCook, to remove this grave reproach to transatlantic entomology, started off one day to observe them. He soon found that the main fact which had been stated was correct, viz. that a certain sect or caste of these ants, disregarding the Italian warning, were in the habit of making themselves all honey, to be swallowed in consequence by the rest of the community. These are the so-called honey-pots, and so well do they deserve their name, that when full the abdomen becomes almost perfectly circular, like a glass globe, and so enormously swollen that the body in proportion to it is like a grain of wheat stuck into a cherry or gooseberry.[82] The legs dangle towards the ground, but hardly, or only by a great effort, reach it, and in this last state of distension the insect may find it impossible to get about, though as a rule by dragging or pushing herself along sideways, she is able to do so to a certain extent. These honey-jars have special chambers for their accommodation, and here they hang in clusters from the roof, awaiting the visit of any worker, who upon signifying his wants—it would seem after climbing up to them—is fed, after the ordinary ant manner, by regurgitation. In the same way the honey-bearers are themselves filled, or more properly speaking, feed themselves, since the mouth arrangement, in spite of the direction in which things seem hastening, has not yet become so simple as in the case of a real jar.