. PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 333 
individuals, you will admit that, after the fright and horror of the conflict 
are over, and their enemies have retreated, they are not likely to experience 
the poignant affliction felt by parents when deprived of their children ; 
especially when you further consider, that most probably some of their 
brood are rescued from the general pillage; or at any rate their females are 
left uninjured, to restore the diminished population of their colonies, and to 
supply them with those objects of attention, the larvee, &c., so necessary 
to that development of their instincts in which consists their happiness. 
But to return to the point from which I digressed.— The negro and 
miner ants suffer no diminution of happiness, and are exposed to no un- 
usual hardships and oppression in consequence of being transplanted into 
a foreign nest. Their life is passed in much the same employments as 
would have occupied it in their native residence. They build or repair the 
common dwelling ; they make excursions to collect food ; they attend upon 
the females; they feed them and the larva; and they pay the necessary 
attention to the daily sunning of the eggs, larvae, and pupa. Besides this 
they have also to feed their masters and to carry them about the nest. 
This you will say is a serious addition to the ordinary occupations of their 
own colonies: but when you consider the greater division of labour in these 
mixed societies, which sometimes unite both negroes and miners in the 
same dwelling, so that three distinct races live together, from their vast 
numbers so far exceeding those of the native nest, you will not think this 
too severe employment for so industrious an animal. 
But you will here ask, perhaps,—‘ Do the masters take no part in these 
domestic employments? At least, surely, they direct their slaves, and see 
that they keep to their work ?” — No such thing, I assure you — the sole 
motive for their predatory excursions seems to be mere laziness and hatred 
of labour, Active and intrepid as they are in the field, at all other times 
they are the most helpless animals that can be imagined ; —unwilling to 
feed themselves, or even to walk, their indolence exceeds that of the sloth 
itself, So entirely dependent, indeed, are they upon their negroes for 
every thing, that upon some occasions the latter seem to be the masters, 
and exercise a kind of authority over them, They will not suffer them, 
for instance, to go out before the proper season, or alone; and if they 
return from their excursions without their usual booty, they give them a 
very indifferent reception, showing their displeasure (which, however, soon 
ceases) by attacking them ; and when they attempt to enter the nest, drag- 
ging them out. ‘To ascertain what they would do when obliged to trust to 
their own exertions, Huber shut up thirty of the rufescent ants in a glazed 
box, supplying them with larvae and pupa of their own kind, with the 
addition of several negro pupa, excluding very carefully all their slaves, 
and placing some honey in a corner of their prison. Incredible as it may 
seem, they made no attempt to feed themselves : and though at first they 
paid some attention to their larva, carrying them here and there, as if too 
great a charge they soon laid them down again ; most of them died of 
hunger in less than two days, and the few that remained alive appeared 
extremely weak and languid. At length, commiserating their condition, 
he admitted a single negro ; and this little active creature by itself re-esta- 
blished order — made a cell in the earth; collected the larvae and placed 
them in it ; assisted the pupa that were ready to be developed; and pre- 
served the life of the neuter rufescents that still survived. What a picture 
of beneficent industry, contrasted with the baleful effects of sloth, does this 
