ANT COMMUNITIES 



Rubicunda's maternal instincts have now awakened, 

 and Nature plies them side by side with her martial 

 powers. She seizes and assembles the cocoons and 

 larvae of her unwilling hosts, who, in turn, by violence 

 and stealth, seek to retain and recover them. Back and 

 forth from the care of the usurper to that of their natural 

 kin the tender and unconscious things are borne, until 

 the extraordinary conflict is closed by the conquest of 

 the Subsericean domain and the death of all its original 

 owners. Here, in this lowly sphere of life, as so often 

 it has been in human affairs, violence and usurpation 

 have prevailed, and a new commune is founded upon 

 war and robbery. 



For this is indeed the foundation of a new emmet 

 commonwealth. Fierce arid remorseless as Rubicunda 

 has been to the adult blacks, she is not untender to their 

 offspring and kin. Her interest in the young brood 

 deepens with the advent of peace. She feeds the Iarva3 ; 

 cleanses them, dandles them, shifts the cocoons from 

 place to place, as though to give them exercise or to 

 better the location. At last and it is a rare event in 

 the history of this budding commune the queen- 

 mother marks the signs of maturity within the tough 

 silken case that encloses a pupa. With hereditary 

 gentleness and skill she plies her mandibles as facile 

 an implement for this delicate surgery as it is dreadful 

 in fight and delivers from the cocoon-case, Nature's 

 detached womb, a living imago ant! The delicate 

 membrane that still encloses it is removed with even a 

 daintier touch, and there appears the first auxiliary 

 citizen of the new commune, full grown and full panoplied 

 for civic duty. It is yet in callow antlinghood ; its shelly 

 "skin' will harden and darken; but its instinct for the 



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