ANT COMMUNITIES 



was one of the worst features of American slavery. 

 Our British forebears, to whom we owe our views of 

 both civil liberty and chattel slavery, were at one with 

 all Europe in holding Africans as the lawful prey of 

 white men, and quite outside the pale of the common 

 right of man to liberty and independent life. 



One needs this bird's-eye glance at this phase of hu- 

 man society as he takes up a somewhat analogous feat- 

 ure of certain ant communes; for our conception of ant 

 " slavery" is colored by the current meaning of the word 

 as derived from our own use and wont. It is not, indeed, 

 an inapt term as applied to emmet communes, if one 

 regard the usage of men in the whole course of social 

 history; but it is a different thing as interpreted by 

 one's preconceptions of slavery as lately existing in the 

 United States. 



In point of fact, there is no trace of such slavery in the 

 relation. What one sees in a so-called slave-holding ant 

 commune shows no involuntary servitude, nor any con- 

 ditions substantially different from those obtaining in 

 ordinary ant communes, except the presence of two 

 distinct species. These, in their bearing toward each 

 other, give no signs of superiority or subordination. 

 It is a co-operative citizenship, whose duties, in one type 

 of commune, are more sharply differentiated between 

 the two classes of citizens than in the other, but wherein 

 all are apparently equal and free, although one class has 

 been kidnapped in infancy and reared in its abductor's 

 home. In so far, no further, they may be ranked as 

 slaves. 



There are several species in America that may be 

 classed as slave-holding but all may be ranged under two 

 types the SANGUINE and the POLYERGINE, so named 



262 



