BATTLE BETWEEN AXTS. 
HILST reclining one beautiful May afternoon in the 
shade of an oak that stood on the outskirts of a 
thicket, my attention was arrested by the activity and 
bustle presented by a colony of yellow ants, which proved 
to be the Formica flava, so common everywhere. 
Scattered indiscriminately about were numberless larve in 
various stages of growth, and not a few immobile pupa, 
that had been brought up from subterranean domiciles 
by thoughtful nurses, while here and there were a dozen or 
more ants, but recently escaped from their mummy-cases, 
basking in the sun’s warmth, preparatory to entering upon 
the duties of the formicarium. 
The very picture of restlessness and anxiety were these 
full-grown neuters. That something was transpiring, or was 
about to transpire, seemed not unlikely, for ova, larve and 
pupz were being quickly carried to places of concealment 
in the earth, or hustled away among the entangling and inter- 
lacing grasses. 
Looking about for the cause of all this excitement, the 
truth at once became painfully apparent. Three large, burly 
ants, representatives of Formuca subterranea, a black species 
that is everywhere abundant in wooded regions, had intruded 
their obnoxious presence into the happy colony, bent, as it 
was evident, on pillage or slaughter. 
Were plunder the inspiring motive, these giant invaders 
were not slow to learn that their weaker kin, though lacking 
their strength, could more than match them in cunning and 
stratagem. 
