BATTLES OF THE BLACK ANTS. 



BY REV. W. P. ALCOTT. 



The wood borings of Formica JPennsylvanica L. are 

 often wonderfuL Sometimes these insects will form, in a 

 soft pine log, a maze of halls, chambers, corridors, and 

 spiral passages, separated by walls little thicker than 

 paper, and altogether of great architectural beauty and 

 finish. 



But attention is now to be called to another line of 

 activity conspicuous in these insects. If investigation of 

 their singular conflicts has been made, it has not happened 

 to attract my notice. The following observations are re- 

 corded that they may incite some young Lubbock or Mc- 

 Cook to find the cause and purpose of these wars. 



On the morning of June 26, 1883, I observed numbers 

 of large black ants wandering excitedly over a back piazza 

 of my house in Boxford, Mass. More careful observation 

 showed a dozen of their dead bodies scattered around, 

 while two living insects were struggling in a desperate 

 conflict. In some places dissevered legs and antennae 

 were thickly strewn, while in retired nooks living ants 

 were resting, either exhausted, w^ounded or skulking. I 

 gathered over twenty corpses from the piazza and the 

 ground. Some of these warriors, having mutuall}^ in- 

 (64) 



