364 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



means of satisfying ourselves by ocular demonstration, since none of the 

 slave-dealing ants appear to be natives of Britain. We must be satisfied, 

 therefore, with weighing the evidence of others. Hear what M. P. Huber, 

 the discoverer of this almost incredible deviation of nature from her gene- 

 ral laws, has advanced to convince the world of the accuracy of his 

 statement; and you will, I am sure, allow that he has thrown over his 

 history a coloring of verismilitude, and that his appeal to testimony is in a 

 very high degree satisfactory. 



" My readers," says he, " will perhaps be tempted to believe that I 

 have suffered myself to be carried away by the love of the marvelous, and 

 that, in order to impart greater interest to my narration, I have given way 

 to an inclination to embellish the facts that I have observed. But the 

 more the wonders of nature have attractions for me, the less do I feel 

 inclined to alter them by a mixture of the reveries of imagination. I 

 have sought to divest myself of every illusion and prejudice, of the ambi- 

 tion of saying new things, of the prepossessions often attached to percep- 

 tions too rapid, the love of system, and the like. And I have endeavored 

 to keep myself, if I may so say, in a disposition of mind perfectly 

 neuter, and ready to admit all facts, of whatever nature they might be, 

 that patient observation should confirm. Amongst the persons whom I 

 have taken as witnesses to the discovery of mixed ant-hills, I can cite a 

 distinguished philosopher (Prof. Jurine), who was desirous of verifying 

 their existence by examining himself the two species united."^ 



He afterwards appeals to nature, and c^Us upon all who doubt it to 

 repeat his experiments, which he is sure will soon satisfy them, — a satis- 

 faction which, as I have just observed, in this country we cannot receive, 

 for want of the slave-making species. And now to begin my history. 



There are two species of ants which engage in these excursions, Poly- 

 ergus rufescens and Formica sanguinea ; but they do not, like the African 

 kings, make slaves of adults, their sole object being to carry off the help- 

 less infants of the colony which they attack, the larvae and pupae ; these 

 they educate in their own nests till they arrive at their perfect state, when 

 they undertake all the business of the society.^ In the following account 

 I shall chiefly confine myself to what Huber relates of the first of these 

 species, and conclude my extracts with his history of an expedition of 

 the latter to procure slaves. 



The rufescent ants^ do not leave their nests to go upon these expedi- 

 tions, which last about ten weeks, till the males are ready to emerge into 

 the perfect state ; and it is very remarkable, that if any individuals attempt 

 to stray abroad earlier, they are detained by their slaves, who will not 

 suffer them to proceed : — a wonderful provision of the Creator to prevent 



' Huber, 287. Jurine, Hi/m6nopteres, 273, 



* It is not clear that our WiUughby had not some knowledge of this extraordinary fact; 

 for in his description of ants, speaking of their care of their pupse, he says, " that they also 

 carry the aurelice of others into their nests, as if they were their own." (Rai. Hist. Ins. 69.) 

 Gould remarks concerning the hill-ant, " This species is very rapacious after the vermides 

 and nymphs of other ants. If you place a parcel before or near their colonies, they will, 

 with remarkable greediness, seize and carry them off." 91. note*. Query — Do they do 

 ih/s to devour them, or educate them? White made the same observation {Nat. Hist. ii. 

 278.). 



^ This species forms a kind of link which connects Latreille's two genera Formica and 

 Myrmica, borrowing the abdominal squama from the former, and the sting from the latter. 



