ANTS — WARS. 
chiefly directed against the legs of its enemies, three, four, or 
five uniting in the effort. They understand barricade fighting 
particularly well in their large well-built dwellings, and if it 
comes to the worst fly by subterranean passages. They are 
feared by most ants on account of their numerical superiority. 
Forel one day poured the contents of ten nests of pratenses in 
front of a tree trunk inhabited by Lasius fuliginosus (jet ant). 
The siege at once began; but the jet ants called in help from 
the nests connected with their colony, and thick black columns 
were at once seen coming out from the surrounding trees. The 
pratenses were obliged to fly, and left behind them a mass of dead 
as well as their pupae, which last were carried off by the victors 
to their nests to be eaten. 
Battles, however, are not confined to species of ants 
having warlike and slave-making habits. The agricultural 
ants likewise at times wage fierce wars with one another. 
The importance of seeds to these ants, and the consequent 
value which they set upon them, induce the animals, 
when supplies are scarce, to plunder each other’s nests. 
Thus Moggridge says, — 
By far the most savage and prolonged contests which I 
have witnessed were those in which the combatants belong to 
two different colonies of the same species. . . . The most 
singular contests are those which are waged for seeds by A . 
barbara, when one colony plunders the stores of an adjacent 
nest belonging to the same species, the weaker nest making 
prolonged though, for the most part, inefficient attempts to 
recover their property. 
In the case of the other species of ant which I have watched 
fighting, the strife would last but a short time — a few hours or 
a day — but A. barbara will carry on the battle day after day 
and week after week. I was able to devote a good deal of time 
to watching the progress of a predatory war of this kind, waged 
by one nest of barbara against another, and which lasted for 
forty six days, from January 18 to March 4 1 
I cannot of course declare positively that no cessation of 
hostilities may have taken place during the time, but I can 
affirm that whenever I visited the spot — and I did so on twelve 
days, or as nearly as possible twice a week — the scene w r as one 
of war and spoliation such as that which I shall now describe. 
An active train of ants, nearly resembling an ordinary 
harvesting train, led from the entrance of one nest to that of 
another lower down the slope, and fifteen feet distant ; but on 
7 
