SOCIAL COMMUNITIES OF BEES AND ANTS 215 
ordinary workers in the nest, apparently discharge the balance 
of their store into living honey-pots, which remain in the nest 
and preserve the food till it 
may be required by the mem- 
bers of the community. Their 
abdomens are enormously dis- 
tended, they never leave the 
nest, and they seem to form 
a distinct caste, whose function 
it is to passively accumulate 
stores of reserve food for the Fig. 26.—Honey-pot Ant. 
community. Curiously enough 
the same peculiar social arrangement is found in different 
genera living as far apart as Mexico, Australia, and South 
Africa. 
There is no doubt that in some cases the division of labour 
is not restricted to the individuals of the same species, but that 
other species are introduced into the nest to perform certain 
functions—thus giving rise to the so-called slavery among 
ants. This is carried to an extreme in the European species 
Formica rufescens, the males and queens of which do no work, 
while the sole function of the workers is to capture slaves of 
the smaller species Formica fusca. In association with this 
specialized mode of instinctive behaviour, “even their bodily 
structure has undergone a change; their mandibles have lost 
their teeth, and have become mere nippers, deadly weapons 
indeed, but useless except in war. They have lost the greater 
part of their instincts : their art—that is, the power of building ; 
their domestic habits—for they take no care of their own young, 
all this being done by the slaves ; their industry—they take no 
part in providing the daily supplies ; if the colony changes the 
situation of its nest, the masters are all carried by the slaves to 
the new one ; nay, they have even lost the habit of feeding. . . . 
I have had a nest of this species under observation for a 
long time, but never saw one of the masters feeding. I have 
kept isolated specimens for weeks, by giving them a slave for 
an hour or two a day to clean and feed them, and under these 
