70 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
tween a small number of the citizens; and the object, 
according to Gould, is to get rid of a useless member of 
the community (it does not argue much in favour of the 
humanity of this species if it be by sickness that this 
member is disabled), rather than any real civil contest. 
‘The red colonies,” says this author, “ are the only 
ones I could ever observe to feed upon their own spe- 
cies. You may frequently discern a party of from five 
or six to twenty surrounding one of their own kind, or 
even fraternity, and pulling it to pieces. The ant they 
attack is generally feeble, and of a languid complexion, 
occasioned perhaps by some disorder or other accident *.” 
I once saw one of these ants dragged out of the nest by 
another, without its head; it was still ‘alive, and could 
crawl about. A lively imagination might have fancied that 
this poor ant was a criminal, condemned by a court of 
justice to suffer the extreme sentence of the law. It was 
more probably, however, a champion that had been de- 
capitated in an unequal combat, unless we admit Gould’s — 
idea, and suppose it to have suffered because it was an 
unprofitable member of the community. At another 
time I found three individuals that were fighting with 
great fury, chained together by their mandibles; one of 
these had lost two of the legs of one side, yet it appeared 
to walk well, and was as eager to attack and seize its op- 
2 Gould, 104, 
» One would think the writer of the account of ants in Mouffet 
had been witness to something similar. “If they see any one idle,” 
says he, “ they not only drive him as spurious, without food, from 
the nest ; but likewise, a circle of all ranks being assembled, cut off 
his head before the gates, that he may be a warning to their children 
not to give themselves up for the future to idleness and efleminacy.” 
~~ Theatr ins. 240 ; 
