as 
= 


394 THE INSECT WORLD. 
the ant-hills they plunder. These young captives get used to 
their kidnappers: brought up in fear of their masters, they never 
think of abandoning them. : 
Two species constitute the warrior tribes which form societies 
mixed with the species they reduce to slavery. They are the 
Russet ant (Fig. 368) and the Blood-red ant (Fig. 369). They 

Fig 368.— Russet Ants (Polyerus rufescens). 
g Y 
always attack the nests of the Ashy-black (Formica fusca) and 
the Miners. The Russet ant has mandibles made for war; they 
appear cut out for struggling and fighting. The Blood-red ants 
are less ferocious. They work themselves, and make none of those 

Fig. 869.—Blood-red Ant (Formica sanguinea). 
sweeping raids by which the Russet ants depopulate the neigh- 
bouring ant-hills. 
What Peter Huber has done for bees, Francis Huber, his son, 
has for the ants. It is from Francis Huber that we borrow the 
description which it remains for us to give, of the habits of ants 
in times of war. He thus relates one of these expeditions, of which 
he was a witness :—‘‘On the 17th of June, 1804,” says he, “as I 
was walking in the environs of Geneva, between four and five in 
the afternoon, I saw at my feet a legion of largish russet ants 
crossing the road. They were marching in a body with rapidity, 
their troop occupied a space of from eight to ten feet long by three 
or four inches wide; in a few minutes they had entirely evacuated 
the road; they penetrated through a very thick hedge and went 
into a meadow, whither I followed them. They wound their way 
along the turf without straying, and their column remained always 
continuous, in spite of the obstacles which they had to surmount. 

