ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 175 



ntfibarbis. They were beaten back by the latter, but had 

 scarcely escaped their jaws before they attacked each other 

 most furiously. 



The powerful Camponolus species have a peculiar method 

 of fighting which enables them to face the Amazons. They 

 raise themselves as high as possible on their hind legs, so as 

 to prevent any seizure of the back, and hold their open jaws 

 towards their enemy, bending their antennae back. At the 

 same time they curve the abdomen so as to be able to inject 

 poison into the wound made. None the less many were 

 killed by a few Amazons which Forel set against some of 

 the C. ligniperdus, and he observed that some were regularly 

 decapitated. At last a kind of truce was made until Forel 

 brought some new ligniperdi which killed all the Amazons 

 and allied themselves with those of their own race. 



The F. exsecta or pressilabris also fights in a peculiar 

 way, which is due to care of their small and very tender 

 bodies. It avoids all single combats and always fights in 

 closed ranks. Only when it thinks victory secure does it 

 spring on its enemy's back. But its chief strength lies in 

 the fact that many together always attack a foe. They 

 nail down their opponent by seizing its legs and holding 

 them firmly to the ground, while a comrade springs on the 

 back of the defenceless creature and tries to bite through its 

 neck. But if threatened the holders sometimes take flight, 

 and so it happens that in battles between the ersectae and 

 the much stronger pratenses not a few of the latter are seen 

 running about with a small enemy clutching their shoulders, 

 and making violent efforts to tear the neck of its foe. If 

 the bearer is then seized with cramp, the nervous cord has 

 been injured. On the other hand if an exsecta is seized by 

 the back by a pratensis it is at once lost. 



The tactics of the turf ants resemble those of the exsectce, 

 three or four of them seizing an opponent and pulling off 

 his legs. In similar fashion the attack of the Lasius species 

 is chiefly directed against the legs of its enemies, three, 

 four or five uniting in the effort. They understand barri- 

 cade-fighting particularly well in their large well-built 

 dwellings, and if it comes to the worst fly by subterranean 

 passages. They are feared by most ants on account of their 

 numerical superiority. Forel one day poured the contents 

 of ten nests of pratenses in front of a tree trunk inhabited 



