ABIDING CITIES 185 



compound eyes, to aid them in their flight abroad ; 

 and they have also single eyelets or ocelli, as in the 

 case of the wasp, which seem to be useful to them 

 in finding the way over large areas, as the com- 

 pound eyes are probably designed for nearer and 

 minuter vision. But the workers have always the 

 true eyes small, and often rudimentary ; while the 

 eyelets or ocelli are mostly wanting. To put it 

 plainly, they are almost blind. There can be very 

 little doubt that their principal organ of sense 

 resides in the antennae, or feelers, which are pro- 

 bably used in part for smelling. Whatever may 

 be the perceptive function which these curious 

 appendages subserve, however, nobody who has 

 watched ants closely ever doubts that they are also 

 used as a means of intercommunication, almost 

 analogous to human language. Whenever two 

 ants of the same nest meet, they stop and parley 

 with one another by waving and crossing their 

 antennae ; so obvious is it, that the information 

 thus conveyed makes one ant follow another to- 

 wards a source of food, or other object of interest, 

 which the first ant has discovered, that the pro- 

 cess is universally described by ant observers as 

 " talking." 



In No. 3 we get an illustration of two workers 

 belonging to an English species known as the 

 Warrior Ant, from its predatory habits, engaged 

 in just such a profound confab together. They 

 are meditating war, and discussing a plan of cam- 

 paign with one another ; for the Warrior Ant is a 

 slave-making species. It is a large red kind, and it 



