ANT COMMUNITIES 



enormous numbers. This makes a great breach in the 

 generation of coming ant-workers. These are essential 

 to the commune, and the adults aim to make up the lack 

 by converting into workers some of their larvae destined 

 for queens. This results in that intermediate form, 

 neither worker nor queen, but a spurious female a 

 pseudogyne. 



At the same time the infatuated ants, under the im- 

 pression that their guest-larvae are valuable to the 

 commune, lavish on them care due to their own progeny. 

 Thus, again, arises a neglect of the young ant queens 

 which stays their growth, and diverts their develop- 

 ment toward the pseudogvne. It is the old storv of the 



<_j, */ 



cuckoo among the birds, who thrusts her egg into an- 

 other bird's nest, and secures for her parasitic offspring 

 the nurture due the legitimate fledglings. 



All this goes sadly against the general reputation of 

 ants for wisdom. But perhaps it might modify our 

 censure to mark our own history or survey existing 

 society. Would it not be found that we have not only 

 tolerated but have fondled and nurtured human 

 parasites in official, family, and private life, greatly to 

 the loss of the commune? Our parasites destroy the 

 virility and the very life of our young, and we endure 

 them. They waste our resources by graft and neglect 

 of duty and pernicious schemes and perverted policies, 

 and we give them our suffrages and support. We open 

 our homes and our harbors to guests who repay our 

 hospitality by implanting among us doctrines, practices, 

 and persons that carry the seeds of communal disorder 

 and decay. Misguided by such social and political 

 unwisdom, it fares with us, and will ever fare, as with 

 ant communes inoculated with Lomechusan beetles. 



232 



