ANT COMMUNITIES 



nowise reacted unfavorably upon themselves. They have 

 not deteriorated, but retain their full generic equipment 

 as builders, nurses, foragers, and workers generally in 

 all the diversified duties of ant citizenship. 



This is in marked contrast with what has occurred in 

 the Polyergine type of slave-makers. There the workers 

 have lost all characteristic qualities except the martial. 

 They have developed into mere vital kidnapping ma- 

 chines, with those soldierly capacities needed to make 

 them effective. As slave-catchers, robbers, and fighters 

 they are highly efficient: but they lack the power to 

 carry on the ordinary and needful affairs of a commune. 

 They remind one of those human tribes whose males 

 function as warriors only, and leave to their slaves and 

 women the entire work and burden of the commune. 

 Indeed, with the Polyergines, degeneration has gone so 

 far that they depend upon their slaves not only to pro- 

 cure food, but to bestow it. So abject is their estate 

 that they cannot feed themselves, and, lacking the of- 

 fices of their slaves, die of starvation. However, as 

 with the Sanguines, no sexed forms are permitted by the 

 Polyergines other than of their own species. 



It is not the writer's purpose to give here a detailed 

 account of a slave-maker's raid. He has given that 

 elsewhere. [McC. 7, p. 71.] But it may be ranked justly 

 among the most interesting incidents in the history 

 of insects whose ethology presents some remarkable 

 analogies to our own social manners. Were we to take 

 a brief view of such an event, what points would fix 

 our attention? We would note the organization or com- 

 munal action implied in the impulse that sends the 

 raiders forth; the scouting that must precede a sortie in 

 order to locate the quested objects of assault; the com- 



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