smallrelative

Updated: June 26, 2025

The meal contains no gluten, and therefore would be useless as cement. It contains only a smallrelative portion of starch, and, when mixed with water, it separates and falls away like so much earthy matter. It may serve as food for the subterranean workers. But the young or larvae of ants are usually fed by juices secreted by the worker nurses.

Henry Walter Bates - The Naturalist on the River Amazons