INSECT ARTILLERY. 123 



The Wood-ant above mentioned has been frequently de- 

 tected* in thus making free with members of its neighbours' 

 infant population, and may probably turn them to the like 

 useful account; but the slave-maker par excellence is a larger 

 brown species, Formica Riifescens, not a native of the free soil 

 of England, though the slave-made F. Fusca, or the negro, is. 

 In the representation of these, our Rufians and our Tuscans, 

 as Amazons, we have strayed but little, if at all, from nature, 

 inasmuch as the fighters and workers of Ant as well as Bee 

 communities are all females, though imperfectly developed; 

 the few of another description, who are the sole mothers of 

 the community, receiving, as such, the homage paid to 

 sovereignty. Their courts, their attendants, their body-guard, 

 their sentinels are no coinage of our own fancy, but the very 

 words used by careful observers as best descriptive of the agents 

 and offices which have come under their notice. If a few of 

 our terms and incidents still seem exaggerated, for " artillery," 

 read a discharge of formic acid, accompanied by a sulphureous 

 odour, commonly ejected by the angry Ant; for "trenchant 

 weapons," read the powerful jaws with which it can sever a 

 limb or head of an antagonist, and you have plain matter of 

 fact. By employment of these same jaws as hold-fasts, the head 

 of a conquered Ant is not unfrequently (says our authority) seen 

 suspended to the leg or an antennae of its victor a trouble- 

 some trophy which he carries to the day of his death. Again, 



* By Gould, White, &c. 



