i3 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



honey in a corner was provided for the support of the colony. At first, 

 the amazons seemed to pay some attention to the larvae, carrying them 

 about here and there, but they soon left them. They did not know 

 how to provide themselves with food. At the end of two days some 

 had already died of hunger close alongside the honey-drops, all were 

 languishing, and they had not even built a chamber. " I was sorry for 

 them," says Huber. He put an auxiliary into the drawer. This soli- 

 tary one restored order, made a house in the earth, gathered the larvae 

 into it, released several nymphae of both kinds that were ready to leave 

 the cocoon, and at last saved the lives of those among the amazons that 

 still had breath. , 



Peter Huber refrains from any comments in describing all these 

 wonders ; he leaves each one, as he says, at liberty to draw any con- 

 clusions he pleases. This one conclusion is inevitable : We do, then, 

 find among animals artificial societies, communities of beings strangers 

 in race, yet living together, contributing, toward one common end, their 

 different qualities and their individual efforts. The hive is always one 

 family only. A mixed ant-hill is inhabited by individuals belonging 

 to species at least as different as the horse, the ass, the zebra so dif- 

 ferent sometimes that zoologists have classed them in distinct genera 

 ( Polyergus formica). Like provinces subject to the same form of 

 government, every ant-hill has, nevertheless, its local history, explained 

 by external circumstances, by conditions of neighborhood and boundary. 

 Each one has only the principle of its organization in common with 

 the rest. The same legionaries have sometimes one species of auxilia- 

 ries and sometimes another, the black-grey or the mason ant, which- 

 ever is within their reach, sometimes both together; or there may be 

 two kinds of legionaries, the " polyergus " and the dark-red, living in 

 the same hill, with one or two species of auxiliaries. Some naturalists, 

 Darwin among others, call these frankly " slave-holders," and the others 

 " slaves." These names are unfair. We must guard against any mis- 

 take as to the very peculiar nature of the relations existing between 

 the two castes.' Each fills a special part in the community, and nei- 

 ther exercises control or despotism in it. If the association, at the 

 outset, rests on violence and abduction, nothing has ever given rise to 

 a suspicion that there is any thing else in a mixed ant-hill than a collec- 

 tion of individuals kept together by special instincts. These names 

 of " slavery " and " republic," applied to such a form of life, are quite 

 void of meaning. Any allusion to politics, to systems, or doctrines of 

 equality, is wholly out of place here ; biology alone has the right of 

 giving a name to a social state which is its peculiar subject of study ; 

 this territory belongs to it alone. 



We have selected these instances because they furnish the most 

 striking proof both of the perfection that instinct may reach, and 

 of the degree of intelligence of which animals are capable which are 

 placed by their nature at an immeasurable distance from man. Peter 



