68 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



Ten days later, when the young ants had become darker, 

 Forel took his colony and installed it in a chink in a wall 

 in the open. In order to strengthen it, he brought some 

 young workers of the same species from a foreign colony. 

 But the original ants would not receive them ; they first 

 threatened them with their jaws, and then seized them and 

 carried them a long way off and left them. They repeated 

 this several times. The original and artificially united ants 

 thus formed themselves into an independent colony. 



The education of the young ants by the old goes on 

 tolerably rapidly, and Forel saw that in several species the 

 young were able to distinguish their friends more or less at 

 the end of three or four days. Owing to its rapidity many 

 observers have entirely overlooked this education, and have 

 thought that ants come into the world with their whole 

 knowledge and mind ready and fixed. Still more important 

 is the teaching of building, of which, later, exact account 

 will be given. 



The natural superiority of the older ants over the younger, 

 given by age, strength, and experience, appears to be the 

 only personal inequality which is to be found in this Republic 

 of Liberty and Equality. The most trustworthy observers 

 unanimously agree with the sentence quoted from Solomon, 

 that the ants, like the colonies of bees, wasps, etc., have no 

 chiefs, overseers, nor leaders, and that one is as good as 

 another. The consciousness of their duty alone keeps them 

 orderly and at work. Some observers, as for example, 

 Ebrard, have nevertheless spoken of such overseers. But 

 Forel affirms that they are the creation of his own fancy. 

 Huber, he goes on, has already shown that ants have no over- 

 seers, and that even the slaves never suffer the least oppres- 

 sion at their masters' hands. He himself confirms this, and 

 never saw an ant which played a submissive part towards its 

 companions. A worker of larger size is always an object of 

 greater attention from the others than is a small, but only 

 on account of its size ; if the large ones march at the bead 

 in their excursions, it is for defensive purpose, of which the 

 smaller are not so capable. On an occasion of change of 

 dwellings, there is no difference of industry among the 

 different ants. The smaller are only more busy because the 

 larger are more warlike, and more fit to do battle. The 

 soldiers, or fighters, which among some European and most 



