xxvi INSECTA : HYMENOPTERA 419 



attacking the defenders of the nest if they actively resist. 

 Though this slave-keeping habit is well marked, the slave- 

 maker, the Blood-red Ant, is still active and largely inde- 

 pendent of its slaves, who only form a fraction of the whole 

 colony, and indeed in some cases are entirely absent. 



A European ant which is allied to Formica but is not 

 indigenous in England, the Russet or Amazon Ant (Polyergus 

 rufescens), 1 is a much more degenerate slave- owner, for here 

 practically all the work of the nest is left entirely to the 

 little dusky slaves (again usually Formica fusca) \ the lazy 

 owners no longer even clean or feed themselves, and will 

 starve if the slaves do not feed them regularly indeed the 

 food must be actually put into their mouths for them. Only 

 when they are going out to pillage, raiding a nest for more 

 slaves, are they active, and brave, and clever. On some July 

 or August afternoon they will wake to energy, and start out 

 in a compact column. Huber describes one such column, 

 which occupied a space 8 to 10 feet long, and 3 or 4 inches 

 wide, with eight to ten ants walking abreast. They hurry 

 along, and having reached a nest of Formica fusca, which 

 usually seems to have been previously located by scouts, they 

 drive off any ants that resist them, and swarm into the nest, 

 soon emerging again, each ant carrying a pupa or larva. If 

 attacked by the rightful owners of these, they kill their 

 opponents by piercing them through the head or thorax with 

 their sickle-shaped mandibles. They carry their booty to their 

 own nests, and hand it over to the slave-nurses, and then they 

 themselves lapse once more into inactivity. If isolated from 

 their slaves they will die in a few days, but Lord Avebury 

 found that he could keep them alive for months if he admitted 

 a slave ant to them for an hour or so a day to clean and feed 

 them. 



Some ants which live on vegetable food alone, 

 have learnt to store up seeds and grains for food 

 during the winter months. Certain of these ants 

 live on the shores of the Mediterranean, and these seem to 

 have been the first ants to be considered worthy of study ; 

 mention of them is frequent in old classic writers, and it 

 is to them, doubtless, that Solomon refers when he says : 



1 P. Huber, Recherches sur Us mceurs des fourmis indigenes (1810) ; 

 A. Forel, Les Fourmis de la Suisse (1874). 



