2O2 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



scavengers, like the wild dogs of Constantinople 

 or the turkey-buzzard vultures of the West Indies 

 and South America. I have sometimes almost 

 been inclined to suspect, myself, that they may be 

 kept as totems, much as human savages domesti- 

 cate one of their revered ancestral animals as an 

 object of worship. 



In other cases the relation between the ants 

 and their domesticated animals is more distinctly 

 economical. For instance, there is a blind beetle 

 most ant-cattle are blind from long residence 

 in the tunnels which has actually lost the power 

 of feeding itself ; but the ants feed it with their 

 own food, and then caress it with their antennae, 

 apparently in order to make it give forth some 

 pleasant secretion. This secretion seems to be 

 poured out by a tuft of hairs at the base of the 

 beetle's hard wing-cases ; these tufts of hair the 

 ants take into their mouths and lick all over with 

 the greatest relish. Some ant tribes even strike 

 up an alliance with other ants of a different 

 species, whose nest they frequent and whom they 

 follow in all their wanderings. Thus, there is a 

 very tiny yellow ant, known as Stenamma, which 

 takes up its abode in the galleries of the much 

 larger Horse Ants and Field Ants. When these 

 big friends change their quarters to a new nest, 

 as frequently happens, the tiny Stenammas accom- 

 pany them, " running about among them," says 

 Sir John Lubbock, "and between their legs, tap- 

 ping them inquisitively with their antennae, and 

 even sometimes climbing on to their backs, as 



