ckroaches and bed-bugs and the corn
growers attribute much of the injury to young corn to the work of the
small cornfield ant which acts as a shepherd of the corn root-louse.
Ants are usually more destructive by protecting and caring for other
pests than by attacking the crop direct.

Every country child is familiar with ants. They are met every day during
the summer, scampering across paths, tugging at some unfortunate insect,
or sticking to one's tongue when he eats berries. Ants are as numerous
as the stars in the skies and vary in size. They are found from the
tropics to the frozen north, in deserts, swamps and in fact, almost any
place where plants or animals live. They do not waste time building or
manufacturing a complicated nest like wasps and bees, so when food is
scare, or for other reasons they need to move they simply "pack up" and
migrate. This, together with the fact that they feed on almost every
imaginable kind of plant and animal material, accounts in part for the
fact that they are the rulers of the insect world.

STUDIES AND OBSERVATIONS

It is easy to study the out-door life of ants, but it is most difficult
to follow their activities in the nest. Go into the field or out on the
school grounds and watch along paths or bare spots for ants. Soon red or
black fellows will be seen hurrying along after food; ants are always in
a hurry when they are after food. Follow them and watch them catch and
carry home small insects. If they do not find worms or other small
insects, drop a small caterpillar near one of them and see what happens.
Can they drag away a caterpillar as large as themselves? Some of them
may be after honey dew, fruit juice or other material of this nature and
they should be observed collecting it. Ants collect about plants or
shrubs which are overrun with green lice, and feed on a sweet liquid
which the lice produce. Watch them collect the honey dew from the lice.
Do they injure the lice? Can you see the two short tubes on the back of
the louse?

Locate an ant nest or hill. Observe the workers carrying out small
pellets of earth or gravels. Is the earth they bring out the same color
as the surface soil? How deep may they go to get it? Do they move about
as if they were in a hurry? Who sends them out with the earth? Why do
they bring it out? Is it dropped as soon as the ant comes out of the
hole or is it carried some distance? The small ant found along paths
usually makes a small ridge