GO TO THE ANT 249 



feeding itself. So completely dependent is each upon his 

 little black valet for daily bread, that he cannot so much 

 as help himself to the food that is set before him. Hiiber 

 put a few slaveholders into a box with some of their own 

 larvae and pupae, and a supply of honey, in order to see 

 what they would do with them. Appalled at the novelty 

 of the situation, the slaveholders seemed to come to the 

 conclusion that something must be done ; so they began 

 carrying the larvae about aimlessly in their mouths, and 

 rushing up and down in search of the servants. After a 

 while, however, they gave it up and came to the conclusion 

 that life under such circumstances was clearly intolerable. 

 They never touched the honey, but resigned themselves to 

 their fate like officers and gentlemen. In less than two 

 days, half of them had died of hunger, rather than taste a 

 dinner which was not supplied to them by a properly con- 

 stituted footman. Admiring their heroism or pitying their 

 incapacity, Hiiber at last gave them just one slave between 

 them all. The plucky little negro, nothing daunted by the 

 gravity of the situation, set to work at once, dug a small 

 nest, gathered together the larvae, helped several pupae out 

 of the cocoon, and saved the lives of the surviving slave- 

 owners. Other naturalists have tried similar experiments, 

 and always with the same result. The slaveowners will 

 starve in the midst of plenty rather than feed themselves 

 without attendance. Either they cannot or will not put 

 the food into their own mouths with their own mandibles. 

 There are yet other ants, such as the workerless Aner- 

 gates, in which the degradation of slaveholding has gone yet 

 further. These wretched creatures are the formic an repre- 

 sentatives of those Oriental despots who are no longer even 

 warlike, but are sunk in sloth and luxury, and pass their 

 lives in eating bang or smoking opium. Once upon a time, 

 Sir John Lubbock thinks, the ancestors of Anergates were 



