FRATERNAL CONFEDERACIES AMONG ANTS 



from a few score to many thousands. There are villages, 

 towns, cities each, for the most part, independent of 

 all others, and each complete within itself, a separate 

 tribe, a sovereign state. That the orderly and successful 

 conduct of such communities must spring, consciously 

 or unconsciously, from some system, is self evident. 

 What is that system? What are its laws, its customs, 

 its methods of administration? Is an ant-hill a mon- 

 archy, a republic, a democracy, a socialistic commune? 

 How does its government compare if in any wise com- 

 parable with the civil governments of men? And 

 what lessons in civics can we learn therefrom? 



Surely, an interesting inquiry here opens up; for, 

 whatever the result, it must give us a glimpse of nature 

 pure and simple. To this the author's purpose is mainly 

 directed; but, as a by-product of his studies, he con- 

 fesses a keen interest in those reflections that traverse 

 the field of human civics, and which inevitably arise 

 as one pursues the history of life in ant communes. 



In many parts of the Alleghany Mountains, and in 

 middle and eastern Pennsylvania, in New Jersey, in 

 the White Mountains and elsewhere, are distributed 

 the large conical nests of the mound-making ants of the 

 Alleghanies, Formica exsectoides (Fig. 12). These vary in 

 size from newly begun colonies a few inches high to 

 mature hills, measuring thirty-seven feet in circumfer- 

 ence at the base, though rarely more than three feet 

 high. They occur in groups; and in one site near Holli- 

 daysburg, Pennsylvania, within a space of fifty acres, 

 the writer counted seventeen hundred well-developed 

 mounds. At two other localities in these mountains sim- 

 ilar groups were observed even more thickly placed. At 



"Pine Hill" about thirty acres were occupied, of which 



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