62 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



What will you say when I tell you that certain ants are af- 

 firmed to sally forth from their nests on predatory expeditions, 

 for the singular purpose of procuring slaves to employ in their 

 domestic business ; and that these ants are usually a ruddy 

 race, while their slaves themselves are black? I think I see 

 you here throw down my letter and exclaim — " What ! ants 

 turned slave-dealers ! This is a fact so extraordinary and im- 

 probable, and so out of the usual course of nature, that nothing 

 but the most powerful and convincing evidence shall induce me 

 to believe it." In this I perfectly approve your caution ; such 

 a solecism in nature ought not to be believed till it has un- 

 dergone the ordeal of a most thorough investigation. Unfor- 

 tunately in this country we have not the means of satisfying 

 ourselves by ocular demonstration, since none of the slave- 

 dealing ants appear to be natives of Britain. We must be 

 satisfied, therefore, with weighing the evidence of others. 

 Hear what M. P. Huber, the discoverer of this almost in- 

 credible deviation of nature from her general laws, has ad- 

 vanced to convince the world of the accuracy of his statement ; 

 and you will, I am sure, allow that he has thrown over his 

 history a colouring of verismilitude, and that his appeal to 

 testimony is in a very high degree satisfactory. 



" My readers," says he, " will perhaps be tempted to be- 

 lieve that I have suffered myself to be carried away by the 

 love of the marvellous, and that, in order to impart greater in- 

 terest to my narration, I have given way to an inclination to 

 embellish the facts that I have observed. 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 imagin- 

 ation. I have sought to divest myself of every illusion and 

 prejudice, of the ambition of saying new things, of the pre- 

 possessions 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 



