52 Chapter II. 



individuals, they would surely show the prudence and 

 precaution of previously exploring more accurately 

 the forces of the foe they want to attack. Thus, they 

 would not dare an assault upon stronger slave nests, 

 until a greater number of forces were collected; then 

 they would, like the Amazons, fall upon the hostile 

 nest in compact masses of many hundreds or thousands 

 at a time, and would take the hostile position by storm 

 without any considerable loss. Why does such a 

 change never occur in the tactics of the sanguine slave- 

 makers? A colony of these robbers, which for many 

 successive years has pillaged the slave nests of the 

 neighborhood and has experienced the different resist- 

 ance offered by different hostile colonies, could easily 

 remember their respective strength and could regulate 

 the manner of future attacks according to this knowl- 

 edge. It would be all the easier for them to make an 

 intelligent use of their former achievements and 

 reverses, because the worker ants generally live for 

 the space of at least two or even three years. And yet 

 not a trace of all this can actually be found. F. 

 sanguinea will forever cling to her wonted tactics of 

 setting out in small, scattered bands, even if bloody 

 failure should ever so often be the result. To an 

 unprejudiced psychologist such facts bear sufficient 

 evidence of the fact that the warfare of F. sanguinea 

 as well as of Polyergus is guided merely by hereditary 

 instincts, not by individual intelligence. Those tactics 

 were not invented by the intelligence of the ants; 

 otherwise the same intelligence of the ants would be 

 able to perfect and to develop them. Yea more : the 

 assumption of ant intelligence is contradictory to the 



