44 Chapter II. 



proved unsuccessful. Even the most savage nations 

 employ tools and weapons of various kinds in order 

 to catch their prey or to wage war against their foes. 

 The parallel drawn by Darwin and Ziegler between 

 the wars of apes and of savages proves to an unpreju- 

 diced observer the very reverse of what Darwin and 

 Ziegler intended to prove : it proves the essential dif- 

 ference between the merely sensitive, psychic faculties 

 of the highest vertebrates, and the spiritual, mental 

 faculties of man. 



2. The Military Expeditions of the Amazon Ant and 

 of the Sanguine Slavemaker. 



The wars of ants bear far greater resemblance to 

 human wars than those of the apes. Indeed, ants no 

 more than other animals use any other weapons than 

 those furnished by nature, namely their swordlike 

 mandibles, their poison stings and poison syringes, 

 but they use them in a manner which of all animal 

 combats most resembles human strategy. Whoever 

 watched a military expedition of the red Amazon ants 

 (Pdlyergus rufescens} or of the sanguine slavemakers 1 

 will no longer entertain any doubts on the subject. 

 The Amazon ants, the European Polyergus rufescens 

 as well as the North American P. lucidus, 2 advance 



*) Since the issue of the book, "Die zusammengesetzten Nestar 

 und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen" (1891), I have had occasion in 

 Lainz near Vienna to observe a number of other Polyergus expeditions, 

 and besides, several sanguined expeditions near Vienna and in Lim- 

 burg (Holland), etc. 



2 ) Called by McCook the "shining slavemaker," whose habits he 

 observed near the Allegheny mountains. There are still three other 

 subspecies (races) of P. rufescens found in N. America, P. breviceps 

 Em., bicolor Wasm. and mexicanus For. 



