CHAP. V Social Life of Animals 8i 



his Naturalist on the Amazons, there are three classes of 

 workers. All the destructive labour of cutting sixpence-like 

 disks from the leaves of trees is done by individuals with 

 small heads, while others with enormously large heads 

 simply walk about looking on. These " worker-majors " 

 are not soldiers, nor is there any need for supervising 

 officers. " I think," Bates says, " they serve, in some 

 sort, as passive instruments of protection to the real 

 workers. Their enormously large, hard, and indestructible 

 heads may be of use in protecting them against the 

 attacks of insectivorous animals. They would be, on this 

 view, a kind oipiices de resistance, serving as a foil against 

 onslaughts made on the main body of workers." The 

 third order of workers includes very strange fellows, with 

 the same kind of head as the worker-majors have, but " the 

 front is clothed with hairs instead of being polished, and 

 they have in the middle of the forehead a twin simple 

 eye," which none of the others possess. Among the 

 honey ants {Myrmecocystus mexicanus) described by Dr. 

 M'Cook from the " Garden of the Gods " in Colorado, the 

 division of labour is almost like a joke.' The workers 

 gather "honey" froth certain galls, and discharge their 

 spoils into the mouths of some of their stay-at-horiie fellows. 

 These passive " honey-pots " store it up, till the abdomen 

 becomes tense and round like a grape, but eventually they 

 have even more tantalisingly to disgorge it for other mem- 

 bers of the community. But this habit of feeding others is 

 exhibited, as Forel has shown, by many species of ants. 

 The hungry apply to the full for food, and get it. A 

 refusal is said to be sometimes punished by death ! 



Marvellous in peace, the ants may also practise the 

 anti-social " art of war," sometimes against other com- 

 munities of the same species, sometimes with other kinds. 

 " Their battles," Kirby says, " have long been celebrated ; 

 and the date of them, as if it were an event of the first 

 importance, has been formally recorded." ^neas Sylvius, 

 after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested 

 with great obstinacy between a great and small species on 

 the trunk of a pear tree, gravely states, " This action was 



G 



