76 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



He afterwards apjieals to nature, and calls upon all 

 who doubt to repeat his expermients, which he is sure 

 will soon satisfy them : — a satisfaction 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, Polyergus rufescens and Formica sangiiinea : 

 but they do not, like the African kings, make slaves of 

 adults, their sole object being to carry off the helpless 

 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 expeditions, 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 



^ It is not clear that our Willughby had not some knowledge of 

 this extraordinary fact ; for in his description of ants, speaking of their 

 care of tlieir pupae, he says, " that they also carry the aurelice of others 

 into their nests, as if they were their oum." Rai. Hist. his. 69. — Gould 

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

 after the vermicles 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 this to de- 

 vour 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 stinc from the latter. 



