ORDER VI. VEIN-WINGED INSECTS. 253 



recipient expresses its gratitude by caressing with the fore 

 feet the head of the donor. 



Now, although among each community of ants there 

 reigns entire love, friendship, unity, and equality ; still, if 

 two different species come in contact, they make war to the 

 death, just as rival human nations do, only there is no cun- 

 ning diplomacy or base espionage used by the former. 

 They fight bloody battles, a great number are mutilated, 

 many lives are lost, and their fortresses are besieged, taken, 

 and destroyed. In these bloody contests, as among men, 

 the workers alone have to fight and suffer, while the males 

 and females, like emperors and kings with their royal fami- 

 lies, fly to some distant place of security, and order their 

 subjects to mutilate and massacre one another for the sake 

 of their glory, ambition, and power. 



Some very remarkable stories, sounding more like fiction 

 than like facts, have been told by various ancient authors 

 concerning the " Wars of the Ants ;" but the most astonish- 

 ing descriptions ever related were abundantly confirmed by 

 the observations of Mr. P. Iluber, of Geneva, in Switzer- 

 land, who published a monograph concerning the ants in 

 1810, " Moeurs des Fourmies indigenes,'' as well as afterward 

 by Mr. Hanhart, of Basle. The latter gentleman describes 

 a battle he witnessed between brown and black ants, and 

 states that the brown ants had two hills near one another 

 at the foot of a tree, while the black ants occupied five hills 

 near together at a distance of forty feet from them. In the 

 month of June, at 10 o'clock a.m., he observed a great 

 movement in the hills of the brown ants. They marched 

 out to the middle of an uncultivated field, which was situ- 

 ated between them and their enemies, and arrayed them- 

 selves in a long, uninterrupted, oblique line of battle, which 

 line was about twenty-four feet long, and consisted of only 

 one file. In the mean time, the much more numerous, but 

 much smaller black ants, also marched out and arrayed 



