PHASES OF LIFE. 91 
certainly considerable differences between the different 
species, and one may almost fancy that we can trace 
stages corresponding to the principal steps in the 
history of human development. 
I do not now refer to slave-making ants, which 
represent an abnormal, or perhaps only a temporary 
state of things, for slavery seems to tend in ants as in 
men to the degradation of those by whom it is 
adopted, and it is not impossible that the slave-making 
species will eventually find themselves unable to com- 
pete with those which are more self-dependent, and 
have reached a higher phase of civilisation. But 
putting these slave-making ants on one side, we find in 
the different species of ants different conditions of life, 
curiously answering to the earlier stages of human 
progress. For instance, some species, such as Formica 
fusca, live principally on the produce of the chase ; 
for though they feed partly on the honey-dew of 
aphides, they have not domesticated these insects. 
These ants probably retain the habits once common to 
allants. They resemble the lower races of men, who 
subsist mainly by hunting. Like them they frequent 
woods and wilds, live in comparatively small communi- 
ties, and the instincts of collective action are but little 
developed among them. They hunt singly, and their 
battles are single combats, like those of the Homeric 
heroes. Such species as Lasius flavus represent a 
distinctly higher type of social life; they show more 
skill in architecture, may literally be said to have 
