70 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



another, without its head ; it was still alive, and could 

 crawl about. A lively imagination might have fancied that 

 this poor ant was a criminal, condemned by a court of 

 justice to suffer the extreme sentence of the law. It was 

 more probably, however, a champion that had been de- 

 capitated in an unequal combat, unless we admit Gould's 

 idea, and suppose it to have suffered because it was an 

 unprofitable member of the community ^. At another 

 time I found three individuals that were fighting with 

 great fury, chained together by their mandibles ; one of 

 these had lost two of the legs of one side, yet it appeared 

 to walk well, and was as eager to attack and seize its op- 

 ponents, as if it was unhurt. This did not look like lan- 

 guor or sickness. 



The wars of ants that are not of the same species take 

 place usually between those that differ in size ; and the 

 great endeavouring to oppress the small are nevertheless 

 often outnumbered by them, and defeated. Their bat- 

 tles have long been celebrated, and the date of them, as 

 if it were an event of the first importance, has been 

 formally recorded. iEneas Sylvius, after giving a very 

 circumstantial account of one contested with great obs- 

 tinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a 

 pear-tree, gravely states, " This action was fought in the 

 pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of 



" One would think the writer of the account of ants in Mouffet 

 had been witness to something similar. "If they see any one idle," 

 says he, " they not only drive him as spurious, without food, from 

 the nest ; but likewise, a circle of all ranks being assembled, cut off 

 his head before the gates, that he may be a warning to their children 

 not to give themselves up for the future to idleness and effeminacy." 

 —Thctttr. Ins. 241. 



