SLAVE-MAKIKG INSTINCT 277 



During the year i860, however, in the month of July, I came 

 across a community with an unusually large stock of slaves, 

 and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters 

 leaving the nest, and marching along the same road to a tall 

 Scotch-fir tree, twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended 

 together, probably in search of aphides or cocci. According 

 to Huber, who had ample opportunities for observation, the 

 slaves in Switzerland habitually work with their masters in 

 making the nest, and they alone open and close the doors in 

 the morning and evening ; and, as Huber expressly states, 

 their principal ofiice is to search for aphides. This differ- 

 ence in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two 

 countries, probably depends merely on the slaves being cap- 

 tured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in England. 



One day I fortunately witnessed a migration of F. san- 

 guinea from one nest to another, and it was a most interest- 

 ing spectacle to behold the masters carefully carrying their 

 slaves in their jaws instead of being carried by them, as in 

 the case of F. rufescens. Another day my attention was 

 struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the 

 same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they ap- 

 proached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent 

 community of the slave-species (F. fusca) ; sometimes as 

 many as three of these ants clinging to the legs of the slave- 

 making F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed their small 

 opponents, and carried their dead bodies as food to their 

 nest, twenty-nine yards distant ; but they were prevented 

 from getting any pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug up a 

 small parcel of the pupae of F. fusca from another nest, and 

 put them down on a bare spot near the place of combat ; 

 they were eagerly seized and carried off by the tyrants, who 

 perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been victorious in 

 their late combat. 



At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel 

 of the pupx of another species, F. flava, with a few of these 

 little yellow ants still clinging to the fragments of their 

 nest. This species is sometimes, though rarely, made into 

 slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith. Althougli so 

 small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it 

 ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my 



