1 877-] 
Our Six-footed Rivals. 
453 
species, if taken at all, are no doubt killed. The query here 
naturally arises, What happens in the not infrequent wars 
between two cities of the same species ? Are the prisoners 
slaughtered, or are they incorporated with the victorious 
nation ? 
No less variation may be traced in the habits of the 
cattle-keeping ants. Of the honey-secreting Aphides and 
Cocci that serve them as milch-kine, some have large herds, 
some small ones, whilst others have none at all, and if they 
encounter an Aphis straightway kill and eat it. Is it not 
more probable that the ants first sought Aphides, like other 
inseCts, for this very purpose, but gradually discovered a 
way to turn them to better account than that a flock of 
Aphides was, by some wonderful coincidence or interposition, 
placed within the reach of the first ant-hill. 
It would therefore, in our opinion, be exceedingly impru- 
dent to declare that ant-civilisation has not advanced, may 
not now be advancing, and may be destined to take yet fur- 
ther steps in the future, especially if large and fruitful 
portions of the globe are long allowed to remain in an un- 
cultivated or semi-cultivated state. But such advances 
must necessarily be slow, as in all cases where there are no 
means of recording the experience of one generation for the 
benefit of the succeeding, and where what among mankind 
would be known as oral intercourse is limited by shortness 
of life. What direction these future advances may take 
it is as difficult to indicate as to foretell the discoveries and 
inventions to be made by man during the next century. 
But we may safely say that they will not consist in the in- 
troduction of tools or weapons, or machinery. Were man, 
in proportion to his size, about twenty times as strong as he 
is at present, — were he provided by Nature with a pair of 
forceps, playing laterally, and capable of being used for 
felling trees, for excavating the ground, or for cutting off the 
heads of his enemies, he would scarcely have been a tool- 
inventing and tool-using animal. A being which, like the 
Sauba ants of Brazil, can construct a tunnel underneath the 
bed of a river as wide as the Thames at London Bridge, is 
in no need of shovels, pickaxes, or barrows. 
That ants, in tropical climates, occasion much loss and 
annoyance to man is indisputable ; yet the annihilation of 
all kinds of ants, were such a measure practicable, would 
scarcely be prudent. Here, as elsewhere, the rule holds 
good that small Carnivora are to be cherished, and small 
Herbivora and Omnivora destroyed. The carnivorous ants, 
such as the Ecitons , are invaluable, from the myriads of 
