ANT EXPEDITIONS TO CAPTURE SLAVES. 35$ 



By means of his artificial glass formicaries, Huber 

 was enabled to try a number of experiments upon 

 these mixed communities of masters and slaves if 

 we may continue to use terms which are not very 

 strictly appropriate. He had already ascertained 

 that when their habitation is not sufficiently commo- 

 dious, the negroes alone, and not the legionaries, 

 choose a new locality, decide upon removing 1 , com- 

 mence building, and as soon as chambers are pre- 

 pared to receive them, carry thither the legionaries 

 in their mandibles. In one of his experiments he 

 was witness to a similar scene. He put the greater 

 portion of the inhabitants of a mixed colony into a 

 woollen bag which had a wooden tube, glazed at the 

 top, fitted into its mouth, and communicating with a 

 glass formicary*. On the following morning some 

 of the negroes were seen leaving the bag, and 

 traversing the tube ; the second day they commenced 

 carrying each other, till at length there was barely 

 room for the crowd of passengers going and return- 

 ing. When he found they had thus begun to 

 establish themselves, he separated the bag and scat- 

 tered those which still remained in it about his 

 study, as well as the remainder of the nest which he 

 brought in from the field. Immediately the negroes, 

 who were already settled, eagerly carried all those 

 that were thus scattered about the floor into the 

 formicary, both their own companions and the le- 

 gionaries, and turned over every clod of earth to ex- 

 tricate pup and larvre accidentally buried, similar to 

 the famous dogs which extricate travellers engulphed 

 in the snows of the Alps. The legionaries, as 

 usual, took no active part in these labours ; but the 

 negro-ants appeared very solicitous to conduct them 

 into the interior of the nest, and sometimes, when one 

 did not know what to do, it would implore the assist* 

 * Figured in Insect Architecture, p, 269. 



