8 
feet. There is, in ant communities, a regular division of labour, 
some are foragers only, and provide food, others nurse and feed the 
larve and carry them about, some which are armed with strong 
biting jaws, or, mandibles, are the soldiers and do all the fighting, 
others again are solely engaged in capturing slaves. It is an 
instructive exemplification of the demoralizing influence of slavery- 
to observe the complete extinction of all the nobler qualities, and 
the abject state of dependence on their slaves exhibited by the 
slave-making ants. The most notable example of this state of 
things is furnished by the Polyergus Rufescens, a large reddish 
brown ant, which is entirely dependent on the services of its 
captured slaves, indeed without their ministrations, they would die 
of starvation, even though surrounded by plenty. They are fed, 
cleaned, and carried about by their devoted attendants ; under this 
demoralizing treatment they have gradually degenerated, and have 
lost their natural and nobler instincts, they no longer care for their 
offspring, have lost the power of building, are indifferent to friends 
or strangers, and are quite unable to forage for food, or even to eat 
it unless it is actually put in their mouths by their slaves; even 
their bodily structures haye deteriorated, the mandibles have lost 
their teeth, and are mere nippers and useless except for fighting 
purposes, though they are then formidable weapons. The method 
of fighting is peculiar but effective; if sufficiently provoked, by a 
strange ant biting its leg, for example, it will jump on its back, and 
either make its powerful and pointed mandibles meet in its adver- 
sary’s brain, or seizing it by the root of the neck will deliberately 
saw its enemy’s head off, in which case its adversary usually lets go 
its hold, but by no means necessarily, for a bull dog is a mere trifler - 
in tenacity, compared with an ant Once having closed their jaws 
not even death will unclose them, it is literally a case of lock-jaw, 
and an ant may frequently be seen walking about with the head of 
an enemy firmly fixed on to one of its legs. This curious tenacity 
M. Mocquery tells us, is utilized by the South American Indians, 
who hold the edges of a wound close together, and then get an 
ant to bite through the two lips, after which they snip off its head. 
M. Mocquery says he has seen natives with wounds thus held 
together by as many as eight or ten ants’ heads. Itis a moot point 
how far ants are actuated by feelings of friendship. Imean of course 
for members of their own nest, for every stranger is necessarily an 
enemy, and as such to be driven away or killed. They adopt tne 
Lancashire doctrine, ‘con amore,’ and if they see a stranger they 
invariably ‘‘ heave arf a brick at him.’’ Many observers have tried 
to solve the problem by smearing ants with treacle, drowning them. 
in water, burying them under earth or stones, and such like playful 
devices, and seeing if they were rescued by friends. Mr. Romane, 
