er
in their honey-gathering excursions, and as the spoils are collected
they are literally packed full of the sweets by the workers. When
distended to their utmost capacity they fall apparently into a
semi-comatose condition, are carried into the ant-hill, and hung up by
the hind legs in a specially prepared chamber, in which (we trust)
enjoyable position and state they are left until their contents are
needed for the purposes of the community, when they are waked up,
compelled to disgorge, and resume their ordinary life activities until
the next season's honey-gathering begins. It scarcely need be pointed
out what an unspeakable boon to the easily discouraged and unlucky the
introduction of such a class as this into the human industrial community
would be, especially if this method of storage could be employed for
certain liquids.

Another most important class in the cell-community is the great group
of the blood-corpuscles, which in some respects appear to maintain their
independence and freedom to a greater degree than almost any other class
which can be found in the body. While nearly all other cells have become
packed or felted together so as to form a fixed and solid tissue, these
still remain entirely free and unattached. They float at large in the
blood-current, much as their original ancestor, the am[oe]ba, did in the
water of the stagnant ditch. And, curiously enough, the less numerous of
the two great classes, the white, or leucocytes, are in appearance,
structure, pseudopodic movements, and even method of engulfing food,
almost exact replicas of their most primitive ancestor.

There is absolutely no fixed means of communication between the
blood-corpuscles and the rest of the body, not even by the tiniest
branch of the great nerve-telegraph system, and yet they are the most
loyal and devoted class among all the citizens of the cell-republic.
They are called hither and thither partly by messenger-substances thrown
into the blood, known as _hormones_, partly by the "smell of the battle
afar off," the toxins of inflammation and infection as they pour through
the blood.

The red ones lose their nuclei, their individuality, in order to become
sponges, capable of saturating themselves with oxygen and carrying it to
the gasping tissues. The white are the great mounted police, the
sanitary patrol of the body. The moment that the alarm of injury is
sounded in a part, all the vessels leading to it dilate, and their