74 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
which Forel at this moment poured out on the nest. The con- 
querors delayed for a moment on the dome after their victory, 
and then entered the nest to bring out a little of the valuable 
booty. A few Amazons which were mad with anger did not 
return with the main army, but went on slaughtering blindly 
among the conquered and the fugitives of the three species, 
fusca , pratensis , and sanguinea. 
The ravished rufibarbes once became so desperate at their 
overthrow that they followed the robbers to their own nest, 
and the latter had some trouble in defending it. The rufibarbes 
let themselves be killed in hundreds, and really seemed as 
though they courted death. A small number of the Amazons 
also sank under the bites of their enemies. The nest contained 
slaves of the rufibarbis species, which on this emergency fought 
actively against their own race. There were also slaves of 
the species fiusca, so that the nest included three different species 
of ants. 
The same nest is often revisited many times on the same day 
or at different periods, until either there is no more to steal, 
or the plundered folk have hit upon better mode of defence. 
A column which was in the act of going back to such a plun- 
dered nest turned when halfway there, and halted, apparently 
on no other ground than because it had met the rearguard 
of the army, and had learned that the nest was exhausted, 
and that there was nothing more to be had there. The 
robbers then went off to a rufibarbis nest which was in 
the neighbourhood, and killed half the inhabitants while 
plundering the nest. The surviving rufibarbes returned 
after the robbery and brought up new progeny ; but thirteen 
days later the Amazrns again reaped a rich harvest from 
the same nest. The Amazon army often severs itself into two 
separate divisions when there is not enough for both to do 
at the same spot. Sometimes one division finds something 
and the other nothing, and they then reunite. If any obstacle 
be placed in their way they try to overcome it, in doing which 
some leave the main army, lose themselves, and only find their 
way home again with difficulty. Forel has tried to establish 
the normal frequency of expeditions, and found that a colony 
watched by himself for a space of thirty days sent out no less 
than forty-four marauding excursions. Of these about eight- 
and-twenty were completely, nine partially, and the remainder 
not at all successful. He four times saw the army divide into 
two. Half the expeditions were levelled against the rufibarbes , 
half against the fuscce. On an average a successful expedition 
