136 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [LECT. 



brown garden-ant, habitually makes use of the out- 

 of-door Aphides, the yellow meadow-ant keeps the 

 underground kinds. M. Lespe's even considered some 

 communities of L. niger to be more advanced in civili- 

 sation than others of the same species. He assures us 

 that if he took specimens of their domestic beetles from 

 one nest, and placed them in another, always, be it under- 

 stood, of the same species, the beetles were attacked and 

 eaten. I have not had the opportunity of repeating 

 these experiments, but I have moved specimens of the 

 blind woodlouse, Platyarthrus, from one nest to another, 

 and even from nests of one species to those of another, 

 and they were always amicably received. But whether 

 there are differences in advancement within the limits of 

 the same species or not, there are certainly considerable 

 differences between the different species, and one may 

 almost fancy that we can trace stages, corresponding to 

 the principal steps in the history of human development. 

 I do not now refer to slave-making ants, which repre- 

 sent an abnormal, or perhaps only temporary, state of 

 things, for slavery seems to lead in ants, as in men, to 

 the degradation of those by whom it is adopted; and 

 it is not impossible that the slave-making species will 

 eventually find themselves unable to compete with those 

 which are more self-dependent, and have reached a 

 higher phase of civilisation. But, putting these slave- 

 making ants on one side, we find in the different species 

 of ants different conditions of life, curiously answering 

 to the earlier stages of human progress. For instance, 

 some species, such as Formica fusca, live principally 

 on the produce of the chase; for though they feed 

 partly on the honey-dew of Aphides, they have not 



