332 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



negroes and miners. On the 15th of July, at ten in the morning, Huber 

 observed a small band of these ants sallying forth from their formicary, 

 and marching rapidly to a neighbouring nest of negroes, around which it 

 dispersed. The inhabitants, rushing out in crowds, attacked them and 

 took several prisoners : those that escaped advanced no further, but ap- 

 peared to wait for succours : small brigades kept frequently arriving to 

 reinforce them, which emboldened them to approach nearer to the city 

 they had blockaded ; upon this their anxiety to send couriers to their own 

 nest seemed to increase ; these spreading a general alarm, a large rein- 

 forcement immediately set out to join the besieging army ; yet even then 

 they did not begin the battle. Almost all the negroes, coming out of their 

 fortress, formed themselves in a body about two feet square in front of it, 

 and there expected the enemy. Frequent skirmishes were the prelude to 

 the main conflict, which was begun by the negroes. Long before success 

 appeared dubious they carried off their pupae, and heaped them up at the 

 entrance to their nest, on the side opposite to that on which the enemy 

 approached. The young females also fled to the same quarter. The san- 

 guine ants at length rush upon the negroes, and attacking them on all 

 sides, after a stout resistance the latter, renouncing all defence, endeavour 

 to make off to a distance with the pupae they have heaped up : the host 

 of assailants pursues, and strives to force from them these objects of their 

 care. Many also enter the formicary, and begin to carry off the young 

 brood that are left in it. A continued chain of ants engaged in this em- 

 ployment extends from nest to nest, and the day and part of the night 

 pass before all is finished. A garrison being left in the captured city, on 

 the following morning the business of transporting the brood is renewed. 

 It often happens (for this species of ant loves to change its habitation) that 

 the conquerors emigrate with all their family to the acquisition which their 

 valour has gained. All the incursions of JF. sanguinea take place in the 

 space of a month, and they make only five or six in the year. They will 

 sometimes travel 150 paces to attack a negro colony. 



After reading this account of expeditions undertaken by ants for so ex- 

 traordinary a purpose, you will be curious to know how the slaves are 

 treated in the nests of these marauders whether they live happily, or 

 labour under an oppressive yoke. You must recollect that they are 

 not carried off, like our negroes, at an age when the amor patrice and all 

 the charities of life which bind them to their country, kindred, and 

 friends, are in their full strength, but in what may be called the helpless 

 days of infancy, or in their state of repose, before they can have formed 

 any associations or imbibed any notions that render one place and society 

 more dear to them than another. Preconceived ideas, therefore, do not 

 exist to influence their happiness, which must altogether depend upon the 

 treatment which they experience at the hands of their new masters. Here 

 the goodness of Providence is conspicuous ; which, although it has gifted 

 these creatures with an instinct so extraordinary, and seemingly so unna- 

 tural, has not made it a source of misery to the objects of it. 



You will here, perhaps, imagine that I have not sufficiently taken into 

 consideration the anxiety and privations undergone by the poor neuters, 

 in beholding those foster-children, for which they have all along manifested 

 such tender solicitude, thus violently snatched from them : but when you 

 reflect that they are the common property of the whole colony, and that, 

 consequently, there can scarcely be any separate attachment to particular 



