SLAVE-MAKING INSTINCT. 241 



leave or enter the nest. Hence, he considers them as strictly 

 household slaves. The masters, on the other hand, may be 

 constantly seen bringing in materials for the nest, and food 

 of all kinds. During the year 1860, however, in the month 

 of July, I came across a community with an unusually large 

 stock of slaves, and I observed a few slaves mingled with 

 their masters leaving the nest, and marching along the same 

 road to a tall Scotch fir-tree, twenty-five yards distant, which 

 they ascended together, probably in search of aphides 01 

 cocci. According to Huber, who had ample opportunities 

 for observation, the slaves in Switzerland habitually work 

 with their masters in making the nest, and they alone open 

 and close the doors in the morning and evening; and, as 

 Huber expressly states, their principal office is to search for 

 aphides. This difference in the usual habits of the masters 

 and slaves in the two countries, probably depends merely 

 on the slaves being captured in greater numbers in 

 Switzerland than in England. 



One day I fortunately witnessed a migration of F. san- 

 guinea from one nest to another, and it was a most interest- 

 ing spectacle to behold the masters carefully carrying their 

 slaves in their jaws instead of being carried by them, as in 

 the case of F. rufescens. Another day my attention was 

 struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the 

 same spot, and evidently not in search of food ; they 

 approached and were vigorously repulsed by an indepen- 

 dent community of the slave-species (F. fusca) ; sometimes 

 as many as three of these ants clinging to the legs of the 

 slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed 

 their small opponents and carried their dead bodies as food 

 to their nest, twenty-nine yards distant ; but they were pre- 

 vented from getting any pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug 

 up a small parcel of the pupae of F. fusca from another nest, 

 and put them down on a bare spot near the place of combat ; 

 they were eagerly seized and carried off by the tyrants, who 

 perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been victorious in , 

 their late combat. 



At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel 

 of the pupae of another species, F. flava, with a few of 

 these little yellow ants still clinging to the fragments of 

 their nest. This species is sometimes, though rarely, made 

 into slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith. Although 

 so small a species, it is very courageous, and' I have seen it 

 ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to 



