KIDNAPPING ANTS AND THEIR SLAVES 



action, for their work is not yet finished. The greed for 

 larger citizenship, as insatiable as in American or Cana- 

 dian frontier towns, demands more captives, and the 

 squadron musters for another raid. Soon they are off 

 in solid column, their course bent towards a negro city 

 several rods distant. It is a large and flourishing for- 

 micary, and at once arouses to repel the invaders. The 

 peaceful industrial commune is transformed into a 

 camp of belligerents. Videttes push out from the city 

 bounds. Sentinels stand alert at every gate. Workers 

 hastily barricade galleries and close up doors, while 

 nurses gather the young into interior rooms for conceal- 

 ment or readier escape. 



Already the battle rages. The Fuscan videttes have 

 met the Sanguine scouts, and, ant to ant, have begun 

 "the tug of war" — a phrase that is literally true of an 

 emmet conflict. Hosts of irate blacks pour out of the 

 formicary and hurl themselves upon the red marauders, 

 who join the issue with equal valor and greater skill. 

 Soon the border is covered with a confused mass of 

 struggling combatants. The red helmets and corselets 

 of the invaders distinguish them from the black armor 

 and slighter forms of their adversaries. But here and 

 there groups are balled together in such a tangle of 

 interlocked jaws and limbs that only the fighters them- 

 selves can tell friend from foe. The toothed mandibles, 

 or upper jaws, are the chief weapons, and with these 

 wide open the ants rush together. If opposing jaws are 

 interclasped in the contact, the fight is likely to be long, 

 and another weapon is brought into play. The abdo- 

 men is curved upward, and jets of formic acid — a sort 

 of chemical '' hand-grenade " — are thrown from the nozzle 

 of the poison-glands into mouth and face. Thus our 



75 



