HYM&NOPTRRA. 



393 



wounded. The miners pursue the pillagers, and snatch their plunder 

 from them. But they are sometimes driven back vigorously, and 

 the russet ants gain their lair with the plunder. 



The tactics of the Red Ants (Formica sanguined} differ from those 

 of the russet They only sally forth in small detachments, which 

 begin by engaging in skirmishes with the scouts thrown out round 

 the enemy's ant-hill. Couriers, despatched from time to time to the 

 camp of the red ants, bring up reinforcements. When the troop 

 feels itself sufficiently strong, it invades the nest of the ashy-black 

 ants, and carries off their offspring, which the latter have not had 

 time to secure. Sometimes, also, the red ants instal themselves in 



37 1 - Philanthus triangulum. Fig. 372. Mutilla Europaea, male and female. 



the nest whose inhabitants they have ejected, and transfer their own 

 population to it. The motive for this emigration is that the old nest 

 has become useless, or that it is exposed to some danger. The red 

 ants are not the only ants which thus desert their birthplace. Many 

 species abandon it likewise, for analogous motives, and construct 

 elsewhere another dwelling, to which they transport all the population 

 of the first nest. 



When we reflect on the habits of ants, we are forced to admit 

 that intelligence and reason appear still more in their acts than in 

 those of bees. The life of ants, as well as that of bees, as far as we 

 are concerned, is an unintelligible enigma. The acts of animals, in 

 general, are sometimes an abyss unfathomable to our reason. The 

 Orientals say, " The last word may be written on man : on the 

 elephant, never ! " Let us add that they should no more say that 

 the elephant will be an inexhaustible theme, but that the history of 

 the ant will continue so always. 



The best-known genera of the Fossores, or Fossorial Hymenop- 

 tera, are Philanthus (Fig. 371), which feeds its larvae on bees, having 

 first numbed them by its sting ; Pompilus and SfiAex, which attack 



