00 TO THE ANT 247 



lodgers. ' One miglit almost imagine,' he says, * that 

 they had the cap of invisibiHty.' Yet it is quite clear 

 that the ants deliberately sanction tlie renidencc of the 

 weevils and woodlice in their nests, for any unauthorised 

 intruder would immediately be set upon and massacred 

 outright. 



Sir John Lubbock suggests that they may perhaps be 

 tolerated as scavengers : or, again, it is possible that they 

 may prey upon the eggs or larvji^ of some of the parasites to 

 whose attacks the ants are subject. In the first case, their 

 use would be similar to that of the wild dogs in Constanti- 

 nople or the common black John-crow vultures in tropical 

 America : in the second case, they would be about equi- 

 valent to our own cats or to the hedgehog often put in 

 farmhouse kitchens to keep doAvn cockroaches. 



The crowning glory of owning slaves, which many philo- 

 sophic Americans (before the war) showed to be the highest 

 and noblest function of the most advanced humanity, has been 

 attained by more than one variety of anthood. Our great 

 English horse-ant is a moderate slaveholder ; but the big 

 red ant of Southern Europe carries tho domestic institu- 

 tion many steps further. It makes regular slave-raids 

 upon the nests of the small brown ants, and carries off 

 the young in their pupa condition. By-and-by the brown 

 ants hatch out in the strange nest, and never having known 

 any other life except that of slavery, accommodate them- 

 selves to it readily enough. The red ant, however, is still 

 only an occasional slaveowner ; if necessary, he can get 

 along by himself, without the aid of his little brown ser- 

 vants. Indeed, there are free states and slave states of red 

 ants side by side with one another, as of old in Maryland 

 and Pennsylvania : in the first, the red ants do their work 

 themselves, like mere vulgar Ohio farmers ; in the second, 

 they get their work done for them by their industrious 



