ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 159 



kill the inhabitants without mercy, and take pleasure in 

 either changing into or living at the same time in such nests 

 near their own. They are also not content to have one 

 house or castle, but are like princes and rich people, who 

 have several houses, castles, or villas at their disposal, while 

 poor people have none at all or live in bad ones, like the 

 horses and dogs of the. rich. Forel knew one colony of the 

 sanguine ants which had three nests and lived in them in 

 turn ! 



"When the sanguine ants are conquered, as sometimes 

 happens, as by the strong pratenses, or when their foes are in 

 too great numerical superiority, they understand how to 

 retreat in good order and defend to the uttermost the 

 entrances of their nest. The pratenses generally manage the 

 blockading of the nest so clumsily, that the sanguine ants 

 have time to fly with their pupae by the further outlets. 

 The only complete overthrow suffered by the sanguine ants 

 is met with, as already related, at the hands of the Amazons, 

 which unite the same tactics to better weapons, greater 

 decision, and more vigorous massed assaults. The Amazons 

 also march more rapidly and understand signals better. 

 They conquer the sanguine even more easily and quickly than 

 other species, because there is a certain amount of anxiety 

 in conjunction with their prudence, and they are mere easily 

 frightened by a sudden attack. Above all it appears as if 

 the impetuous assaults and surprises among most war-making 

 ants had for their chief object the spreading of sudden panic 

 in the hostile camp. ' Every kind of stratagem is also 

 practised if it can serve their object. Forel saw a laden 

 army of Amazons returning from a marauding expedition 

 suddenly attacked by a small troop of sanguine auts. A 

 part of the Amazons laid down their pupse in order to fight 

 better. The sanguine ants took advantage of this moment 

 to seize the deposited pupa3 and ran off with them. 



After the Amazons the most powerful foe of the sanguine 

 ants is the often mentioned pratensis. Yet Forel managed, 

 by artificial mixing, to get the latter to completely serve as 

 slaves in some nests, and both lived together on the best 

 terms. If the pratenses are very numerous, the architecture 

 of the nest takes quite the character of their peculiar style 

 of building. Only the latter are, as a rule, seen prome- 

 nading on the dome of the nest. But at any alarm or 



