180 The Book of Bugs. 



tuft at the base of its wings. If one of these Clavigcfs is 

 put into the nest of strange ants, they fall upon it and 

 slaughter it at once. Some kind of wood lice are kept 

 as scavengers, and the silverfish or bristletail and the 

 larva of the elater beetle are handy to have around to do 

 the heavy digging under the supervision of the workers. 

 Many of these domesticated animals are unable to feed 

 themselves. Lepses saw some ants eating sugar. A 

 Lomechusa of their nest came up and nuzzled them till 

 they fed it. Afterward it climbed upon the lump of sugar, 

 but did not seem to know how to get the good of it for 

 itself. But there are also pets about which are as useless 

 as a pug-dog, if another such a thing in the universe can 

 be imagined. The little Stcnamma westwoodii pranks 

 about in the hills of Formica rufa and F. pratcnsis. It 

 runs along with them, jumps on their backs and takes a 

 ride, and, if for any reason the nest is removed, it goes 

 along. 



Then there is another little ant in these nests that is by 

 no means a pet. It digs its galleries in the partitions so 

 small that the big ants cannot get in to kill it. Every 

 once in a while a Salenopsis fugax'd&tts out, snatches up 

 a baby and runs with it fnto its den, where it eats it up. 

 It is as if we had cannibal dwarfs lurking in the walls, 

 and now and then carrying off one of th'e children to be 

 devoured at horrid banquets behind the plastering. 



But if we begin calling hard names we might as well 

 keep it up, and admit first as last that all ants are canni- 

 bals and feed not only on other kinds of ants, but even 

 upon their own species, when they are not of the same 

 household. They capture and carry off the eggs, larvae, 

 and pupae of other nests, and what they do not have for 

 dinner to-day they fatten for to-morrow. It is supposed 

 that in this way they got in the habit of keeping slaves. 



