68 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



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 alto- 

 gether depend upon the treatment which they experience at 

 the hands of their new masters. Here the goodness of Pro- 

 vidence is conspicuous ; which, although it has gifted these 

 creatures with an instinct so extraordinary, and seemingly so 

 unnatural, 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 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 ; espe- 

 cially 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 larvae, &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 unusual hardships and oppression in conse- 

 quence of being transplanted into a foreign nest. Their life 

 is passed in much the same employments as would have occu- 

 pied 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 larvae ; and 

 they pay the necessary attention to the daily sunning of the 

 eggs, larvae, and pupae. Besides this, they have also to feed 

 their masters and to carry them about the nest. This, you 



