ANT COMMUNITIES 



legal conflicts, what local battles and bloodshed, have 

 resulted from trespasses on boundaries made in the 

 gold and silver mines of the human neighbors and fellow- 

 miners of these insects, old-time Coloradoans know too 

 well. Were the emmets more peaceable and tolerant of 

 one another than the men? Or, would the secrets of 

 their subterranean abodes, if given to natural history, 

 uncover scenes of dreadful conflict and death? 



As the excavations uncovered the interior of the 

 great nest, nothing appeared to indicate a state of war- 

 fare past or recent. As pick, trowel, and knife exposed 

 the rooms, both species were surprised in the midst of 

 their ordinary duties, and showed unmistakably that 

 they were wholly engrossed in peaceful industries. 

 But when, by some careless stroke of the tools, rooms or 

 galleries of the two species were forced together, or 

 when the crumbling earth precipitated the insects into a 

 common trench, then the polemic possibilities appeared. 

 Then blacks and reds grappled in hot strife and fought 

 with fury. The powerful sting of the Occidents was 

 brought into service, as the combatants rolled, strug- 

 gling, in the soil, and the sharp mandibles wrought like a 

 French guillotine, as witnessed by the decapitated trunks 

 of the Formicas quivering in the trench, leaving at times 

 the severed head still clinging to its antagonist by jaws 

 clasped in the rigor of death. 



These battles seemed to confirm the fact indicated 

 by a study of the architecture, that the status of the 

 Formicas in this compound nest was one of peaceful 

 parasitism. The Occidents plainly tolerated their neigh- 

 bors, for manifestly they had the power, had they been 

 so inclined, to drive them out or destroy them. 



/ *, 



