FOUNDING OF SLAVE-MAKING COMMUNES 



service of citizenship is full blown, and at once it joins 

 its foster-mother and queen in helping into freedom its 

 enswathed sisters. 



Steadily the number of callows grows. Every new- 

 corner adds to the working force. All are welcomed by 

 both queen and fellows. To her, all are children; to 

 them, she is a common parent and sovereign, as loyally 

 and lovingly recognized as though they had been the 

 fruit of her own ovaries. At last all the captured brood 

 have matured, and have joined the working- band, and 

 the rooms and galleries (the houses and highways) of the 

 new city are astir with busy life. 



Soon Queen Rubicunda begins to function as mother. 

 The wee white eggs which she drops are cared for by 

 the black workers and nursed into life. They are young 

 Ruble undas! Their ruddy skins are in sharp contrast 

 with the black skins of the Subsericean auxiliaries. It 

 matters not. There is no distinction. They are citizen?, 

 all, of one commune; sisters, all, of one family; inheritors, 

 all, of one nest-odor the real badge of a common citizen- 

 ship. 



Meantime Rubicunda has undergone a noteworthy psy- 

 chical change. The instincts of warrior and sovereign 

 gradually yield to those of mother and founder. She 

 screens her own person, since her life is needful to per- 

 petuate the colony, and for the same reason permits her- 

 self to be guarded and cared for by the workers. Thus 

 the commune is founded and the normal activities of an 

 ant city grow up and go on. 



The case here given of the way in which Rubicunda 

 founds a colony is a typical successful one. But for 

 every such success there have been a multitude of failures. 



And that is well for other tenants of the earth ; for, con- 



271 



