PHASES OF LIFE. 91 



certainly considerable differences between the different 

 species, and one may almost fancy that we can trace 

 stages corresponding to the principal steps in the 

 history of human development. 



I do not now refer to slave-making ants, which 

 represent an abnormal, or perhaps only a temporary 

 state of things, for slavery seems to tend in ants as in 

 men to the degradation of those by whom it in 

 adopted, and it is not impossible that the slave-making 

 species will eventually find themselves unable to com- 

 pete with those which are more self-dependent, and 

 have reached a higher phase of civilisation. But 

 putting these slave-making ants on one side, we find in 

 the different species of ants different conditions of life, 

 curiously answering to the earlier stages of human 

 progress. For instance, some species, such as Formica 

 fusca, live principally on the produce of the chase ; 

 for though they feed partly on the honey-dew of 

 aphides, they have not domesticated these insects. 

 These ants probably retain the habits once common to 

 all ants. They resemble the lower races of men, who 

 subsist mainly by hunting. Like them they frequent 

 woods and wilds, live in comparatively small communi- 

 ties, and the instincts of collective action are but little 

 developed among them. They hunt singly, and their 

 battles are single combats, like those of the Homeric 

 heroes. Such species as Lasius fiavus represent a 

 distinctly higher type of social life ; they show more 

 skill in architecture, may literally be said to have 



