32 Ants. 



species, is the bitter enemy of its hosts. The latter 

 cannot get at them, because they are too large to 

 enter the galleries. The little ones, therefore, are 

 quite safe, and, as it appears, make incursions into 

 the nurseries of the larger ant, and carry off the 

 larvae as food. It is as if we had small dwarfs, 

 about 18 inches to 2 feet long, harbouring in the 

 walls of our houses, and every now and then 

 carrying off some of our children into their horrid 

 dens. 



2. Most ants, indeed, will carry off the larvae and 

 pupae of others if they get a chance ; and this 

 explains, or at any rate throws some light upon, 

 that most remarkable phenomenon, the existence 

 of slavery among ants. If you place a number of 

 larvae and pupae in front of a nest of the Horse 

 Ant, for instance, they are soon carried off; and 

 those which are not immediately required for food 

 remain alive for some time, and are even fed by 

 their captors. 



3. Both the Horse Ant and the Slave Ant are 

 abundant species, and it must not unfrequently occur 

 that the former, being pressed for food, attack the 

 latter and carry off some of their larvae and pupae. 

 Under these circumstances it no doubt occasionally 

 happens that the pupae come to maturity in the 

 nests of the Horse Ant, and it is said that nests are 

 sometimes, though rarely, found in which, with the 

 legitimate owners, there are a few Formica fusca. 

 With the Horse Ant this is, however, a very rare 



