332 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
negroes and miners. On the 15th of July, at ten in the morning, Huber 
observed a small band of these ants sallying forth from their formitary, 
and marching rapidly to a neighbouring nest of negroes, around which it 
dispersed. The inhabitants, rushing out in crowds, attacked them and 
took several prisoners: those that escaped advanced no further, but ap- 
peared to wait for succours: small brigades kept frequently arriving to 
reinforce them, which emboldened them to approach nearer to the city 
they had blockaded ; upon this their anxiety to send couriers to their own 
nest seemed to increase; these spreading a general alarm, a large rein- 
forcement immediately set out to join the besieging army ; yet even then 
they did not begin the battle. Almost all the negroes, coming out of their 
fortress, formed themselves in a body about two feet square in front of it, 
and there expected the enemy. Frequent skirmishes were the prelude to 
the main conflict, which was begun by the negroes. Long before success 
appeared dubious they carried off their pups, and heaped them up at the 
entrance to their nest, on the side opposite to that on which the enemy 
approached. The young females also fled to the same quarter. The san- 
guine ants at length rush upon the negroes, and attacking them on all 
sides, after a stout resistance the latter, renouncing all defence, endeavour 
to make off to a distance with the pup they have heaped up :—the host 
of assailants pursues, and strives to force from them these objects of their 
care. Many also enter the formicary, and beyin to carry off the young 
brood that are left in it. A continued chain of ants engaged in this em- 
ployment extends from nest to nest, and the day and part of the night 
pass before all is finished. A garrison being left in the captured city, on 
the following morning the business of transporting the brood is renewed. 
It often happens (for this species of ant loves to change its habitation) that 
the conquerors emigrate with all their family to the acquisition which their 
valour has gained. All the incursions of F. sanguinea take place in the 
space of a month, and they make only five or six in the year. They will 
sometimes travel 150 paces to attack a negro colony. 
After reading this account of expeditions undertaken by ants for so ex- 
traordinary a purpose, you will be curious to know how the slaves are 
treated in the nests of these marauders—whether they live happily, or 
labour under an oppressive yoke. You must recollect that they are 
not carried off, like our negroes, at an age when the amor patrie and all 
the charities of life which bind them to their country, kindred, and 
friends, are in their full strength, but in what may be called the helpless 
days of infancy, or in their state of repose, before they can have formed 
any associations or imbibed any notions that render one place and society 
more dear to them than another. Preconceived ideas, therefore, do not 
exist to influence their happiness, which must altogether depend upon the 
treatment which they experience at the hands of their new masters. Here 
the goodness of Providence is conspicuous; which, although it has gifted 
these creatures with an instinct so extraordinary, and seemingly so unna- 
tural, has not made it a source of misery to the objects of it. 
You will here, perhaps, imagine that I have not sufficiently taken into 
consideration the anxiety and privations undergone by the poor neuters, 
in beholding those foster-children, for which they have all along manifested 
such tender solicitude, thus violently snatched from them: but when you 
reflect that they are the common property of the whole colony, and that, 
consequently, there can scarcely be any separate attachment to particular 
