Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/99

 encumber himself with bulky collections difficult to transport from place to place, than the study of ants. The whole European ant fauna might be adequately represented by specimens preserved in spirit of wine and packed in the compass of a hat-box.

In taking specimens of ants it is important never to put the representatives of more than one nest in each bottle, but then in most cases a sufficient number may be placed in a single bottle of the size used for containing the smaller homœopathic globules. If possible the winged male and female ants, as well as the wingless workers, should be secured.

The ants die very quickly in pure spirit of wine, and they can afterwards, even after the lapse of months or more, be pinned out in the cabinet after having been washed in warm water. In examining the mouth organs of an ant in order to determine by the aid of books to what genus it belongs, it is best to relax the parts by first washing away the spirit of wine, and then leaving the specimen for a day or more in a stopper bottle partly filled with finely chopped laurel leaves. It is probable that a drop or two of prussic acid on a bit of sponge might act as effectually in rendering the tissues pliable,

A compound microscope is necessary for the final examination of the joints of the labial and maxillary palpi (see Fig. D 2, Plate I., p. 21); but the neuration of the wing (D 1, Plate I.), another very important character, is easily detected with a good pocket-lens.

The works which may most usefully be consulted are, for France, M. Nylander's Formicides de France et d'Algérie, published in vol. v. of the fourth series of the Zoological Division of the Annales des Sciences Naturelles; for England, Mr. F. Smith's Catalogue of British Fossorial Hymenoptera (1856); and for a more general review of the species in the world at large, Mr. F. Smith's Catalogue of Hymenopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum, Part vi., Formicidæ (1858), and M. Mayr's Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Ameisen, published in the Verhandlungen des Zoologisch-botanischen Vereines in Wien, iii. 1853. Abhandlungen (p. 101).