PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 333 



individuals, you will admit that, after the fright and horror of the conflict 

 are over, and their enemies have retreated, they are not likely to experience 

 the poignant affliction felt by parents when deprived of their children ; 

 especially when you further consider, that most probably some of their 

 brood are rescued from the general pillage ; or at any rate their females are 

 left uninjured, to restore the diminished population of their colonies, and to 

 supply them with those objects of attention, the larvae, &c., so necessary 

 to that development of their instincts in which consists their happiness. 



But to return to the point from which I digressed. The negro and 

 miner ants suffer no diminution of happiness, and are exposed to no un- 

 usual hardships and oppression in consequence of being transplanted into 

 a foreign nest. Their life is passed in much the same employments as 

 would have occupied it in their native residence. They build or repair the 

 common dwelling ; they make excursions to collect food ; they attend upon 

 the females; they feed them and the larvae; and they pay the necessary 

 attention to the daily sunning of the eggs, larvae, and pupae. Besides this 

 they have also to feed their masters ^and to carry them about the nest. 

 This you will say is a serious addition to the ordinary occupations of their 

 own colonies : but when you consider the greater division of labour in these 

 mixed societies, which sometimes unite both negroes and miners in the 

 same dwelling, so that three distinct races live together, from their vast 

 numbers so far exceeding those of the native nest, you will not think this 

 too severe employment for so industrious an animal. 



But you will here ask, perhaps, " Do the masters take no part in these 

 domestic employments ? At least, surely, they direct their slaves, and see 

 that they keep to their work ? " No such thing, I assure you the sole 

 motive for their predatory excursions seems to be mere laziness and hatred 

 of labour. Active and intrepid as they are in the field, at all other times 

 they are the most helpless animals that can be imagined; unwilling to 

 feed themselves, or even to walk, their indolence exceeds that of the sloth 

 itself. So entirely dependent, indeed, are they upon their negroes for 

 every thing, that upon some occasions the latter seem to be the masters, 

 and exercise a kind of authority over them. They will not suffer them, 

 for instance, to go out before the proper season, or alone ; and if they 

 return from their excursions without their usual booty, they give them a 

 very indifferent reception, showing their displeasure (which, however, soon 

 ceases) by attacking them ; and when they attempt to enter the nest, drag- 

 ging them out. To ascertain what they would do when obliged to trust to 

 their own exertions, Huber shut up thirty of the rufescent ants in a glazed 

 box, supplying them with larvae and pupae of their own kind, with the 

 addition of several negro pupae, excluding very carefully all their slaves, 

 and placing some honey in a corner of their prison. Incredible as it may 

 seem, they made no attempt to feed themselves : and though at first they 

 paid some attention to their larvae, carrying them here and there, as if too 

 great a charge they soon laid them down again ; most of them died of 

 hunger in less than two days, and the few that remained alive appeared 

 extremely weak and languid. At length, commiserating their condition, 

 he admitted a single negro ; and this little active creature by itself re-esta- 

 blished order made a cell in the earth ; collected the larvae and placed 

 them in it ; assisted the pupae that were ready to be developed ; and pre- 

 served the life of the neuter rufescents that still survived. What a picture 

 of beneficent industry, contrasted with the baleful effects of sloth, does this 



