ANTS FUNEREAL HABITS. 91 



nsed as burial-ground and sort of kitchen-midden, where all the 

 refuse of the nest was deposited. Mrs. Treat has informed me 

 that her artificial nests of crudelis behaved in precisely the 

 same way. 



An interesting fact in the funereal habits of Formica san- 

 guinea was related to me by this lady. A visit was paid to a large 

 colony of these slave- makers, which is established on the grounds 

 adjoining her residence at Vineland, New Jersey. I noticed 

 that a number of carcasses of one of the slave species, Formica 

 fusca, were deposited together quite near the gates of the nest. 

 These were probably chiefly the dry bodies of ants brought in 

 from recent raids. It was noticed that the dead ants were all 

 of one species, and thereupon Mrs. Treat informed me that the 

 red slave- makers never deposited their dead with those of 

 their black servitors, but always laid them by themselves, not 

 in groups, but separately, and were careful to take them a 

 considerable distance from the nest. One can hardly resist 

 pointing here another likeness between the customs of these 

 social hymenopters and those of human beings, certain of whom 

 carry their distinctions of race, condition, or religious caste, even 

 to the gates of the cemetery in which the poor body moulders 

 into its mother dust ! 



It will be observed that none of these accounts furnish 

 evidence of ants burying their dead, as Pliny asserts to 

 have been the case with ants in the south of Europe. In 

 the Proceedings of the Linnsean Society, however (1861), 

 there is a very definite account of such a practice as 

 obtaining among the ants of Sydney ; and although it is 

 from the pen of an observer not well known, the observa- 

 tion seems to have been one about which there could 

 scarcely have been a mistake. The observer was Mrs. 

 Hutton, and this is her account. Having killed a number 

 of ' soldier ants,' and returning half an hour afterwards to 

 the place where the dead bodies were lying, she says : 



I saw a large number of ants surrounding the dead ones. I 

 determined to watch their proceedings closely. I followed four 

 or five that started off from the rest towards a hillock a short 

 distance off, in which was an ants' nest. This they entered, and 

 in about five minutes they reappeared, followed by others. All 

 fell into rank, walking regularly and slowly two by two, until 

 they arrived at the spot where lay the dead bodies of the soldier 

 ants. In a few minutes two of the ants advanced and took up 



