166 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



If two hostile ants meet, each of which knows that it can 

 reckon on the help of its comrades, a murderous conflict 

 generally takes place, in which mandibles, stings (when they 

 have them) and poison play the chief part. They also 

 snatch at each others' legs and try to pull each other into the 

 hostile camp, wherein swift justice is dealt out to the van- 

 quished. The battle is decided most quickly when one suc- 

 ceeds in seizing the thorax of its rival, and either pulls or 

 bites off the head or at least destroys the large nervous 

 cord that runs down the middle line of the body ; each 

 therefore tries to the utmost to guard itself against this 

 manoauvre, so that it only succeeds either by surprise or 

 when one of the combatants is much larger than the other. 

 Among ants with bad eye-sight battles are much slower 

 affairs than among those with good, as they guide themselves 

 almost only by their feelers. Sometimes the combatants or 

 the victors manifest a really infernal cruelty, which almost 

 approaches the wickedness shewn by man to man. They 

 slowly pull from their victim, that is rendered defenceless 

 by wounds, exhaustion, or terror, first one feeler qnd then 

 the other, then the legs one after another, until they at last 

 kill it, or pull it in a completely mutilated and helpless con- 

 dition to some out-of-the-way spot where it perishes miser- 

 ably. Yet some compassionate hearts are to be found 

 among the victors, which only pull the conquered to a distant 

 place in order to get rid of them, and there let them go with- 

 out injuring them. 



If a single ant be seized at the same time by several 

 enemies it is, as a rule, lost. For while it is held fast on 

 every side, one of its opponents springs on its neck and tries 

 to bite through it. Sometimes it is only taken prisoner and 

 dragged into the hostile nest, there to be slaughtered in the 

 cruelest manner. A vanquished ant in dying often clasps 

 itself so firmly round the limbs of its enemy that the latter 

 has the greatest trouble to get free. Often its comrades 

 can only get the corpse away in pieces, while the head is 

 not seldom carried about for days, until decay makes it fall 

 off. Only the Amazons are able to avoid this misfortune 

 by piercing through the head of their enemies in the way 

 already described, for the jaws of their enemy lose their 

 strength when the brain is destroyed. 



Among most ants their courage rises in proportion to the 



