76 - PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



''My readers," says he, "will perhaps be tempted 

 to believe that I have suffered myself to be carried 

 away by the love of the marvellous, and that, in order 

 to impart greater interest to my narration, I have given 

 way to an inclination to embellish the facts that I have 

 observed. But the more the wonders of nature have 

 attractions for me, the less do I feel inclined to alter 

 them by a mixture of the reveries of imagination. I 

 have sought to divest myself of every illusion and pre- 

 judice, of the ambition of saying new things, of the 

 prepossessions often attached to perceptions too rapid, 

 the love of system, and the like. And I have endea- 

 voured to keep myself, if I may so say, in a disposition 

 of mind perfectly neuter, and ready to admit all facts, 

 of whatever nature they might be, that patient obser- 

 vation should confirm. Amongst the persons whom I 

 liav^e taken as witnesses to the discovery of mixed ant- 

 hills, I can cite a distinguished philosopher (Prof. 

 Jurine) who was desirous of verifying their existence 

 by examining himself the two species united^." 



He afterwards appeals to nature, and calls upon all 

 who doubt to repeat his experiments, which he is sure 

 w ill 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, F. rifjescens, and F. sariguinca, Latr. ; 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 



f liuber/28T. J urine, IJymawpteres,213, 



