THE NATURAL 



among termites. Here, as with bees, the neuters are the 

 base of the republic, the males die after mating, the 

 females after laying. "There are," says M. Janet 

 (Recherches sur I'anatomie de la jourmt) "workers so 

 different from the others, in the development of their 

 mandibles and the largeness of their heads that one 

 calls them soldiers, a name according with the role they 

 fill in the colony." These soldiers are also butchers, who 

 cut up prey which is too large or dangerous. Specializa- 

 tion is the only superiority of the neuters who for the 

 rest seem inferior to the females and to the males in 

 size, muscling and visual organs. The females are some- 

 times half as large again as the neuters, the males being 

 between the two sizes. The ant shows much more in- 

 telligence than the bee. Before this tiny people one 

 seems really to touch humanity. Consider that the ants 

 have slaves, and domestic animals. First the plant lice, 

 preferably those who live on roots, and, at need, those 

 of the rose-bush, who are milked, and who permit it, 

 subjected by long heredity. Aphis jormicarum vacca, 

 says Linnaeus briefly (beetle the ants' cow). But wan- 

 dering herds are not enough for them, they keep in the 

 interior of their ant-hills, colonies of slave plant-lice, of 

 domesticated staphylins. The staphylins are small 

 coleoptera with mobile abdomen, one of their species is 

 only found among ants. They are domesticated to the 

 point of no longer being able to feed themselves: the ants 

 stuff the necessary food into their mouths. In return the 

 staphylins furnish their masters a revenue analogous to 

 that which they get from the plant-lice: from the bunch 

 of hairs rising at the base of their abdomen they seem to 

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