ANT COMMUNITIES 



posures of leadership, and give herself up to the duty of 

 adding to the communal numbers, in and for which she 

 is sheltered and protected by the force of the entire 

 commune. 



Her original offices as builder, purveyor, caretaker, 

 defender, pass over to the workers, and therewith the 

 war-like spirit which communal safety requires. When 

 the young males come upon the scene they are treasured 

 for their one necessary function, and then cast off. They 

 are not specialized as soldiers; nature has forbidden that 

 by denying them defensive weapons; for a like reason 

 they cannot work. They are simply dependents- 

 nature's beau ideal of the "gentleman loafer." Thus 

 it comes about that all emmet warriors are veritable 

 Amazons. 



It has been said that an ant commune presents the 

 phenomenon of a social government where every active 

 citizen or "citizeness/ if one fancies that term is a 

 warrior. Yet herein, also, we may record an exception 

 that approximates them more closely to our own con- 

 ception of a military organization wherein the fighting 

 members are a separate class. One might use a stronger 

 word: for in the course of human history soldiers have 



> 



been not rarely a real caste. And, in truth, it amounts 

 to that even now in some nations. Perhaps the "anti- 

 militarism" that marks social agitations in certain quar- 

 ters is simply a modern industrial swing away from the 

 old bondage to a soldier caste. 



Be that as it may, nature shows us in ant communes 



t/ 



examples, in various stages of development, of the dif- 

 ferentiation of ordinary workers into soldiers. In many 

 species the line of demarcation is not sharply drawn, 



but appears in the greater size, especially of the head 



202 



