FRATERNAL CONFEDERACIES AMONG ANTS 



just in view, one sees a ring of sentinels. At the door 

 into the pebble-sheathed cone of the Occident ant (Po- 

 yonomyrmex occidentalis) of the American plains, which 

 opens into the breast of the cone, the watchmen wait, 

 intent and vigilant. So it is elsewhere, and almost 

 everywhere, that ants are found in large communities. 

 It is the law of emmet as it is of human society, that 



"Some must watch, while some must sleep; 

 So runs the world away!" 



These watchmen do not always belong to a soldier 

 caste. Every emmet citizen who has passed the brief 

 callow stage of first emergence from pupahood is a 

 policeman or soldier on occasion, and may, as far as the 

 facts now appear, go on sentry as on any other duty. 

 It would not be strange if, in the gradual development 

 of such a social system, certain individuals should have 

 shown special aptitudes for police service that kept them 

 more or less continuously therein, and so have arisen 

 something like a soldier class. In some species such 

 has been the case, as with those of the genus Pheidole, 

 and the leaf-cutting or parasol ants of Texas. 



But it is not so with our mountain mound-builders. 

 They remind one of the militia organization of our earlier 

 frontier States Ohio, for example, which made every 

 adult male, not disqualified by age or otherwise, subject 

 to military duty. Indeed, such is, in theory, the relation 

 of all citizens of the American republic to the general 

 government. Among our ants that duty is never dodged. 

 There are no desertions. Lazy, cowardly, and skulking 

 ants one does not see. With heartiest good-will the 

 call to service is met, and a " clear call," apparently, is 

 simply a perception of the commune's danger and need. 



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