82 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



After reading this account of expeditions undertaken 

 by ants for so extraordinary a purpose, you will be cu- 

 rious to know how the slaves are treated in the nests of 

 these marauders — whether they live happily, or labour 

 under an oppressive yoke. You must recollect that 

 they are not carried off, like our negroes, at an age 

 when the amor patricB and all the charities of life which 

 bind them to their country, kindred and friends, are 

 in their full strength, but in what may be called the 

 helpless days of infancy, or in their state of repose, be- 

 fore they can have formed any associations or imbibed 

 any notions that render one place and society more 

 dear to them than another. Preconceived ideas, there- 

 fore, do not exist to influence their happiness, which 

 must altogether depend upon the treatment which they 

 experience at the hands of their new masters. Here 

 the goodness of Providence is conspicuous; which, al- 

 though it has gifted these creatures with an instinct so 

 extraordinary, and seemingly so unnatural, has not 

 made it a source of misery to the objects of it. 



You will here, perhaps, imagine that I have not suf- 

 ficiently taken into consideration the anxiety and pri- 

 vations undergone by the poor neuters, in beholding 

 those foster-children, for which they have all along ma- 

 nifested such tender solicitude, thus violently snatched 

 from them : but when you reflect that they are the com- 

 mon property of the Avhole colony, and that, conse- 

 quently, there can scarcely be any separate attachment 

 to particular individuals, you will admit that, after the 

 fright and horror of the conflict are over, and their 

 enemies have retreated, they are not likely to experi- 

 ence the poignant affliction felt by parents when de- 



