76 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
But the more the wonders of nature have attractions for 
me, the less do I feel inclined to alter them by a mixture 
of the reveries of imagination. I have sought to divest 
myself of every illusion and prejudice, of the ambition of 
saying new things, of the prepossessions often attached to 
perceptions too rapid, the love of system, and the like. 
And I have endeavoured to keep myself, if I may so say, 
in a disposition of mind perfectly neuter, and ready to 
admit all facts, of whatever nature they might be, that 
patient observation should confirm. Amongst the persons 
whom I have taken as witnesses to the discovery of mixed 
ant-hills, I can cite a distinguished philosopher (Prof. 
Jurine) who was desirous of verifying their existence by 
examining himself the two species united*. ” 
He afterwards appeals to nature, and calls upon all 
who doubt to repeat his experiments, which he is sure 
\ 
will soon satisfy them :—a satisfaction which, as I have 
just observed, in this country we cannot receive, for want 
of the slave-making species. And now to begin my his- 
tory. 
There are two species of ants which engage in these 
excursions, F. rufescens and F. sanguinea, Latr.: but they 
do not, like the African kings, make slaves of adults, their 
sole object being to carry off the helpless infants of the 
colony which they attack, the larvee and pupz; these they 
educate in their own nests, till they arrive at their perfect 
state, when they undertake all the business of the society >. 
@ Huber, 287. Jurine, Hyménopteres, 273. 
> It is not clear that our Willughby had not some knowledge of 
this extraordinary fact ; for in his description of ants, speaking pane 
care of their pupe, he says, “ that they also carry the aurelie of others 
into their nests, as if they were their own.”? Rai. Hist. Ins. 69.— Gould 
remarks concerning the hill-ant, “ This species is very rapacious 
