ANTS AND ANT LIFE 167 



number of their comrades or the size of their colony. The 

 same ant which shuns no danger when joined by many 

 others, becomes anxious and timid when it knows itself to 

 be alone or surrounded by few companions. Perhaps, also the 

 tendency to self-preservation and care for the safety of 

 smaller colonies or societies lead to the avoidance of serious 

 danger and conflicts, while larger societies see no harm in 

 sacrificing some of their citizens. 



The wounded and the sick, as already mentioned, are taken 

 care of. If their case is regarded as hopeless, they are 

 carried to a distant place and left there to die. In similar 

 fashion, at the end of a fight, the corpses, or the remains of 

 them, are taken out of the nest, for the ants keep their nests 

 as clean as they do their bodies. Dupont maintains that 

 many species of ants have their own church-yards or com- 

 mon burial-grounds, and that they formally deposit therein 

 their dead or their fallen. Improbable as this may sound, 

 several casual observations have been made which prevent 

 us from relegating it quite to the region of fable. After a 

 battle artificially brought about in a garden between four 

 different species (rufa, sanguined, cinerea, and pratensis), 

 Forel saw the field of battle covered with the slain of each. 

 But the greater number were, remarkable to say, arranged 

 in a long and regular row as though they were to be buried. 

 Perty (loc. cit. p. 318) publishes a communication from 

 Mrs. Lewis Hatton, of Sidney, which relates a regular 

 burial of twenty ants pressed to death by their companions. 

 Bingley (loc. cit. p. 174) also mentions the observation of 

 an Englishman who saw an ant bring the body of a com- 

 i-ade out of the nest and carry it away to a distant place. 

 This he saw repeated several times, one after another. 

 Lubbock (loc. cit.) also saw dead ants carried out of the 

 nest and laid in heaps at a distant spot " exactly as in a 

 cemetery." McCook (loc. cit.) saw similar proceedings 

 among all the species which he observed. The corpses were 

 always heaped together in an out-of-the-way place, " as 

 though the crude idea of a mortuary had dawned on the 

 mind of the little creatures." 



In all these cases the dead of their own friends have been 

 in question, but the corpses of enemies are generally torn in 

 pieces in order to lick up the sweet juices therein contained. 

 On the other hand, as Forel assures us, the grown ants of 



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