70 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



tween a small number of the citizens ; and the object, 

 according to Gould, is to get rid of a useless member 

 of the community (it does not argue miich in favour of 

 the humanity of this species if it be by sickness that 

 this member is disabled), rather than any real civil 

 contest. "The red colonies," says this author, "are 

 the only ones I could ever observe to feed upon their 

 own species. You may frequently discern a party of 

 from five or six to twenty surrounding one of their own 

 liind, or even fraternity, and pulling it to pieces. The 

 ant they attack is generally feeble, and of a languid 

 complexion, occasioned perhaps by some disorder or 

 other accident*." I once saw one of these ants dragged 

 out of the nest by another, without its head ; it was 

 still alive, and could crawl about. A lively imagina- 

 tion might have fancied that this poor ant was a cri- 

 minal, condemned by a court of justice to suffer the 

 extreme sentence of the law. It was more probably, 

 however, a champion that had been decapitated in an 

 unequal combat, unless we admit Gould's idea, and 

 suppose it to have suffered because it was an unpro- 

 fitable 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- 



" Gould, 104. 



* One would think the writer of the account of ants in Moiifl'et had 

 been witness to somethina; similar. " If tiiey 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 iiead before the 

 gates, that he may be a warning to their children not to give themselves 

 Up for the future to idleness and effeminacy." — Tlicatr. Ins. 241. 



