Ill 



RAIDS OF THE AMAZON ANTS 



FOR more than forty years zoology has been 

 continuously enriched by the observations of 

 Professor Carlo Emery, an Italian naturalist, who 

 has grown old in the service of entomology and in 

 the study of ants in particular. One of his recent 

 papers (1916) reports on fresh investigations of 

 the European Amazon ant, one of the handsomest 

 and most bewildering of pismires. To appreciate 

 Emery's advance we must recall the main facts 

 of a strange story. Transitory mixed colonies of 

 two species of ants are not very uncommon; they 

 lead on to cases like the blood-red ant, Formica 

 sanguined, a gifted, belligerent creature which 

 usually makes slaves of the workers of other species, 

 but can thrive well enough without them if it 

 chooses. Very different from these sanguinary 

 ants, as they may be called, are the degenerate 

 slave-holders and the social parasites, which are 

 altogether dependent on their slaves or hosts. But 

 between the degenerate forms which have sur- 

 rendered independence for ease, and the sanguinaries 

 which can be independent if they will, are the 

 Amazons. They cannot live without slaves, and 



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