40 Ants. 



of this sad history. We may safely conclude that 

 in distant times their ancestors lived, as so many 

 ants do now, partly by hunting, partly on honey ; 

 that by degrees they became bold marauders, and 

 gradually took to keeping slaves ; that for a time 

 they maintained their strength and agility, though 

 losing by degrees their real independence, their arts, 

 and even many of their instincts ; that gradually- 

 even their bodily force dwindled away under the 

 enervating influence to which they had subjected 

 themselves, until they sank to their present degraded 

 condition weak in body and mind, few in numbers, 

 and apparently nearly extinct, the miserable repre- 

 sentatives of far superior ancestors, maintaining a 

 precarious existence as contemptible parasites of 

 their former slaves. 



13. But putting these slave-making ants on one 

 side, we find in the different species of ants different 

 conditions of life, curiously answering to the earlier 

 stages of human progress. For instance, some 

 species, such as Formica fusca, live principally on 

 the produce of the chase ; for though they feed 

 partly on the honey-dew of aphides, they have not 

 domesticated these insects. These ants probably 

 retain the habits once common to all ants. They re- 

 semble the lower races of men, who subsist mainly 

 by hunting. Like them they frequent woods and 

 wilds, live in comparatively small communities, and 

 the instincts of collective action are but little de- 

 veloped among them. They hunt singly, and their 



