Slaves and Guests 337 



employing them to build the masters' habitations and 

 tend the grubs. So dependent have these slave-making 

 ants become through the long practice of their raiding 

 habits that they are unable to work in any way for them- 

 selves and perish if deprived of their slaves. A more 

 pleasing feature in ant-communities is seen in the shelter 

 which their nests afford to a multitude of guests, which 

 as a rule render some service to their hosts. The 

 association of ants with Aphids has long been noticed, 

 and the use which they make of the aphids — taking 

 food from the " honey-tubes " of the latter — has been 

 compared to the use which men make of cattle. Ants 

 seek aphids on plants, or at times convey them to their 

 nests ; females about to found a fresh colony have even 

 been observed to choose a spot where a few aphids 

 had already settled. The waxy secretion of Coccids, 

 too, is esteemed a luxury by the ants, and those 

 insects are commonly inmates of the nests. Small 

 blind Beetles whose grubs have to be fed by the ant- 

 workers are also occasional guests and are believed to 

 supply their hosts with some sweet secretion. Other 

 inmates appear to act as scavengers, making their 

 living on the ants' excrement. A small Bristle-tail 

 {Lepismima) has been observed to play the part of a 

 thief in the ant-commonwealth, lurking beneath the 

 heads of two workers during the passage of disgorged 

 food from one to the other, seizing the drop of fluid 

 and making off with it. The common Red Ants 

 {Mynnica rubra) harbour numbers of blind mites ; a 

 single worker has been observed to carry about three 

 of these at once, and they are fed by the ants, when 

 they make request by patting the insects with their 

 feet. No service is known to be given by the mites 

 in return for the ants' bounty, but it is hard to believe 

 that they are carried about and fed from pure motives 

 of benevolence (163). 



