ANT COMMUNITIES 



It has been thought that the hospitality extended by 

 ants to beetles and other myrmecophilous insects is in 

 part due to their value as general scavengers just as men 

 in a ruder stage of civilization have kept (and still keep) 

 dogs, and as certain communities protect by law turkey- 

 buzzards and gulls. The relations of these alien associates 

 to the food supply have heretofore been pointed out, 

 but their usefulness in removing communal garbage may 

 be a factor in maintaining these strange companion- 

 ships. 



Perhaps one might venture to suggest tnat the steady, 

 ample, and congenial occupation of ants must contribute 

 to good health, the chief aim of sanitation. And there- 

 in may be included an evenly poised temperament, free- 

 dom from anxiety for present and future support, and 

 absence of the strain and wear of nerves which come 

 with troubles over property and the want thereof all 

 of which are characteristic of ants, and which may be 



*/ 



counted for these and other lower orders a boon of 

 nature. 



This estate, with its sequent of perfect content and 

 happiness, ants attain by complete absorption into the 

 commune, the entire atrophy of the sense of personal 

 ambition and possessions. Men seek the same in a way 

 precisely the reverse: by the enlargement of personal 

 importance, and the acquirement and accumulation of 

 personal property. Could the experiment be fairly 

 made in a human commune, it might be found that men 

 could more readily and completely secure the repose of 

 happy minds within wholesome bodies by the methods 

 of the ants than by their own. In all ages men have 

 sought this repose in organized communes, religious and 

 secular; but these have been marked, for the most 



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