ANENT ANTS. 267 



sion of fiercest rage and defiance. Pitched battles sometimes occur 

 between different pugnacious species, and classical writers have deemed 

 them woi-thy to be recorded. Kirby and Spence relate that " ^neas 

 Sylvius, after giving a circumstantial account of one contested with 

 great obstinacy by a large and a small species, adds that ' this action 

 was fought in the Pontificate of Eugenius IV.' " Thoreau gives 

 a graphic description in his whimsical style of exalting small tnings 

 and emphasizing the trifling difference that there is between big 

 and little actors and events in Nature of a similar engagement 

 that took place near his hut " in the presidency of Polk, five years 

 before the passage of Webster's Fugitive Slave Bill" ("Walden," 

 p. 346). 



Whether such an enactment obtains in any of the ant nations is 

 unknown, but that certain of them possess the extraordinary instinct 

 of capturing the pupoe of other species and bringing them up as slaves, 

 is a well-authenticated fact. They are made captive while still in the 

 cocoon, and on emerging become the auxiliary workers and friends of 

 their captors, as though such was their natural destiny. 



But no fanciful exaggeration is needed to impress us with the 

 degree of forethought, methodical industry, and dauntless courage, 

 the engineering and mechanical skill, the reasoning and perceptive 

 powers and general sagacity which the ant displays. 



If space permitted, numerous illustrative citations could be given. 

 A member of the Natural History Society describes a tubular bridge, 

 half an inch in diameter, and spanning a chasm twelve inches across. 

 A correspondent of Mr. Darwin's, Mr. Joseph D. Hague, a geologist 

 of California, submits what seems to be satisfactory evidence that they 

 realize danger from seeing the corpses of their fellows, an inference 

 drawn by no other invertebrate, if indeed it be by the higher animals. 



They keep domestic animals. The aphides, or plant-lice, excrete a 

 peculiar sweet fluid which the ant obtains by caressing the abdomen 

 of the aphis with its antennae. Ordinarily they seek the aphides upon 

 plants, but that they also keep them in their nests much as man keeps 

 cows, is an opinion which receives the sanction of eminent naturalists, 

 among them Sir John Lubbock, who further says : " Ants also keep a 

 variety of beetles and other insects in their nests. That they have 

 some reason for this seems clear, because they readily attack any un- 

 welcome intruder ; but what that reason is we do not yet know. If 

 these insects are domesticated by the ants, then we must admit that 

 the ants possess more domestic animals than we do." 



Indeed, their whole social economy is of a complex order. No- 

 where is the division of labor which in mankind always marks a high 

 state of civilization so rigid, being carried to the extreme of a phys- 

 ical modification of great numbers of the community for the better 

 fulfillment of their duties. Their undeveloped sterile females may 

 serve to warn or to encourage those members of the Anthroindce 



