368 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



consideration the anxiety and privations undergone by the poor neuters, 

 in beholding those foster-children, for which they have all along manifested 

 such tender solicitude, thus violently snatched from them : but when you 

 reflect that they are the common property of the whole colony, and that, 

 consequently, there can scarcely be any separate attachment to particular 

 individuals, you will admit that, after the fright and horror of the cooflict 

 are over, and their enemies have retreated, they are not likely to experi- 

 ence the poignant affliction felt by parents when deprived of their children ; 

 especially when you further consider, that most probably some of their 

 brood are rescued from the general pillage ; or at any rate their females 

 are left uninjuried, to restore the diminished population of their colonies, 

 and to supply them with those objects of attention, the larvae, &c., so 

 necessary to that development of their instincts in which consists their 

 happiness. 



But to return to the point from which I digressed. — The negro and 

 miner ants suffer no diminution of happiness, and are exposed to no 

 unusual hardships and oppression in consequence of being transplanted 

 into a foreign nest. Their life is passed in much the same employments 

 as would have occupied it in their native residence. They build or repair 

 the common dwelling ; they make excursions to collect food ; they attend 

 upon the females ; they feed them and the larvse ; and they pay the 

 necessary attention to the daily sunning of the eggs, larvae, and pupae. 

 Besides this, they have also to feed their masters and to carry them about 

 the nest. This you will say is a serious addition to the ordinary occupa- 

 tions of their own colonies : but when you consider the greater division of 

 labor in these mixed societies, which sometimes unite both negroes and 

 miners in the same dwelling, so that three distinct races live together, from 

 their vast numbers so far exceeding those of the native nest, you will not 

 think this too severe employment for so industrious an animal. 



But you will here ask, perhaps — " Do the masters take no part in these 

 domestic employments ? At least, surely, they direct their slaves, and 

 see that they keep to their work ?" — No such thing, I assure you — the 

 sole motive for their predatory excursions seems to be mere laziness and 

 hatred of labor. Active and intrepid as they are in the field, at all other 

 times they are the most helpless animals that can be imagined ; — unwilling 

 to feed themselves, or even to walk, their indolence exceeds that of the 

 sloth itself. So entirely dependent, indeed, are they upon their negroes 

 for every thing, that upon some occasions the latter seem to be the 

 masters, and exercise a kind of authority over them. They will not 

 suffer them, for instance, to go out before the proper season, or alone ; 

 and if they return from their excursions without their usual booty, they 

 give them a very indifferent reception, showing their displeasure (which, 

 however, soon ceases) by attacking them; and when they attempt to 

 enter the nest, dragging them out. To ascertain what they would do 

 when obliged to trust to their own exertions, Huber shut up thirty of the 

 rufescent ants in a glazed box, supplying them with larvae and pupae of 

 their own kind, with the addition of several negro pupae, excluding very 

 carefully all their slaves, and placing some honey in a corner of their 

 prison. Incredible as it may seem, they made no attempt to feed them- 

 selves: and though at first they paid some attention to their larvae, carry- 



