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. Huber, of Geneva, in Switzer- 
land, who published a monograph concerning the ants in 
1810, ‘* Meurs des Fourmies indigénes,’ 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 
