48 WARS OF ANTS. 



carried, perforce, about her, the slaughtered Fuscan's head and 

 shoulders, frightful trophy of her dear-bought victory ! 



Who can paint the scene that followed ? Who can number 

 the innocents that day made captive ? 



Triumphant was the homeward march of the victorious 

 Rufians, each Amazonian victress shouldering her ravished bant- 

 ling. Of the little captives, some (the pupce) were wrapt in a 

 sort of swaddling-clothes, whilst others (the larvae), who were 

 younger and not thus enthralled, felt equally ill at ease under 

 the awkward handling of their warlike captors. No longer 

 keeping (in consequence, perhaps, of their acquired encum- 

 brances) the regular array, in which, spite of impeding obstacles, 

 they had advanced towards the ransacked city, their return, 

 for the greater portion of the way, was straggling and irregular: 

 but converging from all points, they at last reassembled again 

 in a compact body before their own capital. 



Thus were the free nurseries of Fusca stripped almost to ex- 

 tinction, that the slave nurseries of Rufia might be replenished 

 to overflowing. 



****** 



The foregoing, like many another historic record of a graver 

 nature, is not, we confess it, exactly true ; but the following 

 notes, drawn chiefly from Huber, the veracious chronicler of 

 the Ant nations, will show that our fiction treads very closely 

 on the heels of fact. 



The wars of Ants were observed long ago, and one of their 

 battles, fought under the pontificate of Eugenius IV, was 

 honoured by having for its historian ^Eneas Sylvius, who was 

 afterwards Pope himself, as Pius II. The most warlike of the 

 Ant tribes, according to Huber, is the Wood-ant, the largest 

 British species, of which we have elsewhere told a tale with 

 relation to other than its military characteristics. 1 These, as 

 well as its domestic doings, are delightfully described by the 

 above writer, and a walk to some neighbouring wood is almost 



1 Supra, p. 74. 



