WARRIOR ANTS, AND THEIR EQUIPMENT 



considerations, military men know the value of "rc- 

 seives" in bracing up the troops on the firing-line by 

 an appeal to the confidence that springs from conscious- 

 ness of an efficient support to fall back upon. It is 

 curious to note an experience somewhat like this in the 

 above reflex as operative among ants. 



Naturally our thoughts, when turned to the subject 

 of war, call up the forms of males as the sole or chief 

 actors. So it is among men and the wild and domestic 

 animals that we know best. Certainly there are women 

 not lacking in belligerency, and when congregated in 

 riotous mobs they have at times been fiercely combative. 

 But in organized and communal fighting females rarely 

 have had a part. War is a male occupation. 



In ant communes we strike another atmosphere. The 

 difference between the male temperament in ants and 

 in the human species is so great that we cannot frame 

 a just basis for comparison. In man the masterful 

 qualities have developed in the male and the dependent 

 ones in the female. It is the reverse of this among ants. 

 The male is a dependent, in whom capability of self- 

 support and self-defence has been obliterated. The 

 female and it must be remembered that all workers 

 are females in a stage of incomplete development is 

 the sole efficient servitor of the commune in peace and 

 in war. 



The queen, or productive female, is The Commune in 

 germ. She is THE AXT, in whom are centred all the 

 qualities and functions of the whole race, save the power 

 to quicken the eggs. She is the true "war lord' in the 

 early stages of establishing a nation, and only when 

 the foundations are securely fixed does she abdicate, and, 

 effacing herself as a chief, retire from the toils and ex- 



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