ANIMALS IN SOCIETY 29 



theory can we account for the divisions and subdivisions 

 of social functions in nests of crawling ants ? Take, 

 for example, the Amazon ants. Their homes are 

 filled with slaves, and the master-ant has lost not 

 only the desire to work, but even the habit of feed- 

 ing itself, so that it would die of hunger beside a pile 

 of sugar if a grey ant were not there to put it into its 

 mouth. 'Among the Amazons the slaves under- 

 take every labour ; it is they who build, and who 

 carry the young for their masters. They bring them 

 food, clean them, and carry them from place to 

 place, if there is need to emigrate. The masters, by 

 losing interest in work, lose also their votes when 

 it is a question of taking a resolution concerning the 

 whole colony. The servants act on their own initia- 

 tive and their own responsibility, and even in grave 

 concerns, such as emigration, the idle masters do not 

 seem to be consulted.' The divisions of insects into 

 castes of fighters and workers seems in some instances 

 due to sexual difference, as in the case of bees and 

 hornets. But this does not explain the subsequent 

 apportioning of the tasks of each in the common in- 

 terests of the society. Who directs that one set of 

 bees shall go abroad to fetch honey, another set wait 

 to receive and clean them on the platform at the 

 mouth of the hive, and a third body guard the en- 

 trance against robbers? Yet the working of this 



