Care of the Young in the Animal Kingdom. 187 



is very suitable, that just Polyergus should so often 

 rear ergatoid queens. Nor is this arrangement in 

 any way due to the ''intelligence" of the Amazons ; for 

 the education of their offspring is entirely committed 

 to the care of their slaves (mostly F. fusca) ;^ these 

 slaves, how^ever, have been robbed from colonies which 

 do not rear ergatoid females, and neither reflection 

 nor experience could have given them intellectual 

 knowledge of the requirements peculiar to the nursing 

 of Polyergus. Here animal intelligence is entirely 

 powerless. If F. fusca, the slaves of the Amazons, rear 

 the offspring of their masters in a way suited to the 

 preservation of exactly this species, then we must 

 admit, that the nursing instincts of the slaves are 

 influenced and modified by the peculiar sensations 

 caused by the Polyergus-r\Qsis. 



But what shall we say of the rearing of pseu- 

 dogynes with F. sanguinea? This combination of 

 female and worker is decidedly injurious to the 

 preservation both of the colonies and of the species. 

 The pseudogynes are stunted beings, neither workers 

 nor femiales, unfit to participate either in building the 

 nest or in nursing the young,^ in defending the colony 

 or in propagating the race ; in fine, they are down- 

 right failures. It is evident, that their origin is not 

 due to the "individual intelligence of the ants" ; for. 



^) Near Exaten, Holland, all Polyergus-nests, I met with, contained 

 F. fusca as slaves; those which I found in Bohemia (Mariaschein), 

 Austria (Vienna) and in Luxemburg, had F. rufibarbis as slave species. 

 The ergatoid queens I met hitherto only in nests with fusca-slaves. 



') It happened only very seldom (among several hundred observa- 

 tions only five times), that, on the nest being exposed to the light, a 

 pseudogyne seized and carried away an ant-larva, whilst workers are 

 always wont to do so. 



