Battle Between Ants. 157 
May it not be that the parents, finding all efforts to restore 
their young to freedom ineffectual, sought this method of 
saving them from a life to which death must assuredly be 
preferable? Instances of like character might be adduced 
by the hundred, but enough has been written to show that, 
in the case of Formica flava, an unwillingness to allow the 
humblest of the colony to be taken into bondage was the 
motive which prompted the sacrifice. 
