THE AMAZON ANT. 481 



spoil. This consists solely of the pupae which will afterward be 

 developed into neuters, and vast numbers of the unconscious 

 young are carried off in the jaws of the conquerors. The right- 

 ful owners and relatives of the captured young can not resist the 

 enemy, as their shorter though more generally useful jaws are 

 unable to contend with the long and sharply-pointed weapons of 

 their foes. 



After the marauding army has returned, the living spoils are 

 carefully deposited in the nest, where they are speedily hatched 

 into perfect insects of the worker class, and immediately take on 

 themselves the labors of the nest, just as they would have done 

 in their own home. The Amazon Ant seems to be utterly incap- 

 able of work ; and in one notable instance, when a numbet of 

 them were confined in a glass case, together with some pupse, they 

 were not only unable to rear the young, but could not even feed 

 themselves, so that the greater number died from hunger. By 

 way of experiment, a single specimen of the slave Ant {Formica 

 fused) was introduced into the case, when the sta,te of affairs was 

 at once altered. The tiny creature undertook the whole care of 

 the family, fed the still living Amazon Ants, and took charge of 

 the pupae until they were developed into perfect insects. 



Some writers have enlarged upon the hard lot of the slave Ants, 

 imagining their servitude to be as distasteful to them as it is 

 sometimes made to human slaves. Mr. "Westwood, however, points 

 out very clearly that any compassion bestowed upon them is wast- 

 ed, and that the lot of the " helots" — if they may be so called — is 

 precisely that for which they were made. The labors which the 

 little creatures undertake are not arbitrarily forced upon them by 

 the dread of punishment, but are urged upon them by the instincts 

 implanted within them. They would have worked in precisely 

 the same manner, and with exactly the same assiduity, in their 

 own nests as in that of their captors, and the labors are undertaken 

 as willingly in the one case as in the other. 



They find themselves perfectly at home, and are in every re- 

 spect on a par with their so-called masters. In point of fact, how- 

 ever, the real masters in the nest are the slaves, for upon them the 

 Amazons are dependent from their earliest days to the end of 

 their life, and without them the entire community would perish. 

 The slaves have no other home but that to which they have been 

 brought, and are no more to be pitied than are dogs, cattle, and 

 other domestic animals that never have freedom. Indeed, none 



Hh 



