170 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



WARS AND BATTLES. 



wars and battles of the ants are sometimes waged 

 j_ between different nests or different colonies of the 

 same species, and sometimes between distinct species and 

 genera. They are also murderous in a sense in which the 

 slave hunts, aimed at a single object, are not, as a rule, and 

 the slain, wounded and maimed are found in numbers no 

 smaller than those in the bloodiest wars of men. The irri- 

 tation of battle also is not less than the similar irritation in 

 human struggles, and all the wild passions of human nature, 

 such as lust of blood and of slaughter, cruelty, etc., appear 

 on such occasions to be as roused and as real in the little 

 ant as in the " crown of creation." The warriors sometimes 

 become intoxicated with the heat of battle, until at last they 

 are so mad that they forget all prudence and often sacrifice 

 or permit themselves to be killed in quite a useless way. In 

 such case infuriated warriors can generally only be pacified 

 by a number of their comrades holding them by the legs and 

 stroking them with the feelers until the fit of rage has passed 

 over. An observation of this kind among the Amazons has 

 already been mentioned. 



Hauhart of Bale (" Scientific Journal of the Scholars of 

 the Bale High School, III., 1825, No. 2) observed a regular 

 battle between the black garden ants (F. nigrd) and the small 

 black ants (F. fused), and described it as follows : 



The fusca had two nests and the nigra five small ones close 

 together, twelve yards apart. At Whitsuntide at 10 o'clock 

 in the morning a great movement was seen among the fuscce. 

 They marched out against the nigrce in long oblique lines of 

 battle, with two separate troops on the advanced left wing 

 and three on the right at some distance. The numerous 

 black ants arranged themselves in a rather deeper order of 

 battle, also with two separate wings. The armies grappled 



