FOUNDING OF SLAVE-MAKING COMMUNES 



Formica pratensis cocoons during the course of a sum- 

 mer failed to raise a single one. [F. 1, p. 259.] 



Yet there is apt to be, and commonly is, a remainder 

 that gets adopted. And there will always be among 

 the imported cocoons some that are near maturing, and 

 actually mature before they are needed for food. These 

 imported imagines are born into the native nest-odor^ 

 and are thus qualified for acceptable citizenship: a 

 status acquired, as Miss Fielde has shown, within the 

 first three days following emergence. [Fd. 2, p. 320.] 

 These drop naturally into the services of callows, as 

 though they were at home, and they make up the con- 

 tingent of consociates in mixed colonies, and of auxilia- 

 ries or slaves, which in the Sanguine type of commune is 

 apt to be less than half the whole number of workers. 

 No sexed forms are tolerated among these abducted and 

 adopted citizens, and therefore no rival queens with 

 conflicting claims disturb the communal peace. 



These facts are now well established, and they are 

 substantially those which Darwin predicated as the basis 

 of his theory of the origin of the dulotic habit in Formica 

 sanguinea, and which long ago were approved by such 

 master myrmecologists as Forel and Wheeler, and such 

 a philosophical naturalist as Lord Avebury. 



The acquisition of the habit of raiding in column has 

 yet to be accounted for. Every individual ant is, by 

 the primary necessity of feeding itself and others, a 

 natural forager. The worker is hardly well out of cal- 

 lowhood ere the strong instinct of communal benefi- 

 cence, fortified no doubt by personal hunger, impels it 

 forth from the home gates to pick up whate'vier edible 

 it may happen upon. The emmet "conscience' 1 knows 



no law of meum et luum, and these solitary plunderers 



273 



