118 NATURAL HISTORY. [cH. VII. 



CHAPTER VII. 



ANTS. 



Their Industry— Affection for their Young— Courage— Tfieir Anger- 

 Unite in Myriads for War and Extermination— The Fallow Ants — 

 The Sanguine Ants — The Legionary Ants — Attack other Ants, and 

 reduce them to Slavery. 



The history of the insects now to be described 

 presents examples of an industry which has become 

 proverbial, and traits of affection and feeling which 

 would do honour to our own species. Love and 

 courage, patience and perseverance, almost all the 

 higher virtues of human nature, when arrived at 

 the highest pitch of earthly perfection, seem to be 

 the ordinary springs of action in the ant. 



Of ants, as of other social insects, the largest 

 portion of the community consists of neuters ; be- 

 ings possessing the most exquisite sentiments of 

 maternity unalloyed by passion ; so that from their 

 birth to their death they live, think, and act only for 

 the offspring of another. 



The instincts of this insect are, indisputably, 

 more extraordinary than those of any other in the 

 whole range of animated nature. The ancients 

 magnified them into fabulous miracles. Pliny talks 

 of an Indian ant as big as an Egyptian wolf, of the 

 colour of a cat, which entered the bowels of the 

 earth in search of gold, of which they are said to 

 have been plundered during the winter by the human 

 inhabitants of those regions. 



But exaggeration and credulity apart, the real 

 habits and proceedings of these insects are so ex- 

 traordinary, that they would stagger our belief, if 

 not confirmed by such observers as Huber and La- 

 treille. 



Their nests contain three kinds of individuals — 



