140 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



never saw the lazy little things feed themselves. Lubbock 

 also could only keep alive a captive Polyergus by placing 

 with it daily, during an hour, a slave which cared for and 

 fed it. 



All this sufficiently shows how thoroughly dependent the 

 Amazons are upon their slaves. They also sometimes 

 allow themselves to be earned by their slaves, although the 

 latter are smaller and weaker. But this does not prevent 

 the Amazons from picking up the slaves and carrying them 

 off when changing their nest, or when otherwise necessary, 

 for they very well know that they cannot live without them. 

 Huber watched such an occurrence, when an army of 

 Amazons found a deserted nest of P. fusca, and emigrated to 

 it, each Amazon seizing a slave and carrying it off. All 

 domestic duties are completely handed over to the slaves, 

 while the masters give themselves up only to war and sloth. 

 If a nest of Amazons (generally situated under a flat stone) 

 be opened and disturbed, the masters run away without 

 troubling themselves further, while the slaves with noble 

 self-forgetfulness seize the pupa? and larvae and try to save 

 them. The Amazons are, therefore, in the true sense of the 

 word filibusters and highwaymen, and direct their whole 

 energy to robbery and slave-catching. Agreeably to this, 

 the neuters are endowed with a personal courage which 

 would seem to the highest degree marvellous to everyone 

 if an ant were not in question, and which drives them to the 

 most unheard-of exploits. A single Amazon, thrown into 

 the middle of a number of hostile ants, does not seek to 

 escape, as any other ant would do, but strikes right and left, 

 piercing the heads of ten or fifteen opponents, until at last 

 overpowered. This mad valor is only shown by the Amazon 

 when it seems to know that it must be lost in any case, for 

 when it fights in ranks and with the prospect of victory, its 

 courage is of a wiser kind, and the single ant does not sepa- 

 rate itself from the main army save under pressing need, and 

 if necessary retreats with the latter. Only when the fight 

 has become very embittered or has lasted for a long time, 

 some Amazons at last grow so furious that, forgetting every- 

 thing around them, they only take pleasure in blind biting 

 and slaughter. They bite at everything they see, at pupae, 

 larvfe, and even pieces of wood. Forel saw them kill their 

 own slaves which were trying to soothe them. Generally the 



