38 STRUGGLE AMONGST ANIMALS 



foraging expeditions, singly or in vast companies, 

 and return with stores of food and plunder. Their 

 habits and customs have been described with a 

 wealth of picturesque language and an attribution 

 of human motive excessive even for writers on 

 natural history, and I suspect that much new obser- 

 vation and careful interpretation are required before 

 we can really understand what is going on. But 

 taking the picturesque descriptions even at their 

 face value, it is certain that in the case of bees, wasps 

 and termites, although there may be fighting, either 

 individual or in companies, in defence of the hive or 

 nest against either intruders of the same kind or 

 alien enemies, and although there may be occasional 

 raids for food on the nests and hives of others, there 

 is nothing in the form of direct warfare between one 

 community and another. Ants belonging to many 

 species are chiefly or wholly vegetarian, and although 

 the march of foraging columns has been compared 

 with the movements of armies, the operations are 

 peaceful, and fighting is confined to defence. Car- 

 nivorous ants attack every creature, dead or alive, 

 that comes in their way, and when in the tropics 

 they overrun a house, every cockroach, spider, centi- 

 pede, lizard, snake, rat or mouse that does not 

 hurriedly escape, is seized and devoured. If fighting 

 take place between one community of carnivorous 

 ants and another, it seems to be an accidental issue 

 of the general search for food, rather than a pro- 

 cess in which one community is trying to prosper 

 through the extermination of another, and I have 

 not heard it even suggested that the stronger party 

 retains possession of a nest that it has ravaged. 



