GO TO THE ANT 245 



way into books of natural history about the manners and 

 habits of these blind marauders. They cross rivers, the 

 West African gossips declare, by a number of devoted in- 

 dividuals flinging themselves first into the water as a 

 living bridge, like so many six-legged Marcus Curtiuses, 

 while over their drowning bodies the heedless remainder 

 march in safety to the other side. If the story is not true, 

 it is at least well invented ; for the ant-commonwealth 

 everywhere carries to the extremest pitch the old Eoman 

 doctrine of the absolute subjection of the individual to the 

 State. So exactly is this the case that in some species 

 there are a few large, overgrown, lazy ants in each 

 nest, which do no work themselves, but accompany the 

 workers on their expeditions ; and the sole use of these 

 idle mouths seems to be to attract the attention of birds 

 and other enemies, and so distract it from the useful 

 workers, the mainstay of the entire community. It is 

 almost as though an army, marching against a tribe of 

 cannibals, were to place itself in the centre of a hollow 

 square formed of all the fattest people in the country, 

 whose fine condition and fitness for killing might immedi- 

 ately engross the attention of the hungry enemy. Ants, 

 in fact, have, for the most part, already reached the 

 goal set before us as a delightful one by most current 

 schools of socialist philosophers, in which the individual 

 is absolutely sacrificed in every way to the needs of the 

 community. 



The most absurdly human, however, among all the 

 tricks and habits of ants are their well known cattle- 

 farming and slave-holding instincts. Everybody has heard, 

 of course, how they keep the common rose-blight as milch 

 cows, and suck from them the sweet honey-dew. But 

 everybody, probably, does not yet know the large number 

 of insects which they herd in one form or another as 



