FRATERNAL CONFEDERACIES AMONG ANTS 



some tropical lands even larger mounds are found. 

 Livingstone speaks of ant-hills in South Africa that 

 dotted the face of the country like haycocks in a harvest- 

 field. In the woods they were twenty feet high and 

 forty to fifty feet in diameter! [Li. 1, p. 590.] These 

 rival the great gothic erections of the termites. Whether 

 the African ants show the communal unity that exists 

 among our Alleghany mound-builders has not been 

 determined. But such unity must obtain among the 

 vast hordes that occupy each hill. 



One who studies the economy of these communes 

 soon notes a well-defined division of labor among the 

 three worker castes viz. t workers-major, workers-minor, 

 and minims or dwarfs. There are sentinels or police- 

 men, masons or builders, foragers, nurses, and courtiers 

 or queen's body-guard. These are not so differenced 

 as to form fixed classes which embrace always the same 

 individuals with duties limited to one sort of service, 

 as is the case in some other species. Apparently, all 

 branches of service have recruits from all the castes, and 

 these pass from one duty to another at will. On the 

 surface (as far as human intelligence discerns) it is a 

 "go-as-you-please' 1 arrangement, which nevertheless is 

 dominated by some occult principle that brings orderly 

 results out of seeming chaos. 



There appears to be no specialized warrior caste among 

 these lormicans, but there are sentinels, or policemen, 

 whose duty it is to guard the community from hostile 

 approach. Their internal affairs call for no domestic 

 police. Among these millions of citizens there is not 

 one criminal, not one degenerate! I do not recall, in 

 all my long and varied observations, a single example of 



an ant whose actual offending called for the administra- 



9 



