286 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
knows its own followers, and it is very rarely indeed 
that a friend is attacked. If this does happen, the 
onslaught is almost instantly changed to a caress, and 
the two friends turn against a common enemy. At 
night each army returns home, but at daybreak the 
battle begins again, and may rage for many days till 
either the inhabitants of one nest are destroyed or 
routed, or bad weather puts an end to the fighting. 
And when the war is over, the dead and mangled 
are not left on the field, for these terrible cannibals 
carry them off to their nests to suck the juices from 
their bodies. 
Such are the battles of the hill -ants, but the 
mode of attack is very various among the different 
races. The red ant (see p. 288), for example, is 
much more wily and given to stratagem, and does 
not fight in such large masses. Again, there are 
tiny ants which, when attacked by larger ones, hang 
on the legs, and jump upon their backs, biting them 
and tearing them to pieces, while the larger ant tries 
to strangle them in her mandibles. One particular 
slave-making ant * has especially pointed mandibles, 
and she drives them right into the brain of her 
enemy, throwing her into convulsions and paralysing 
her. On the other hand, those ants which have 
stings make use of them in fighting rather than of 
their mandibles, while, as we have seen, the hill-ant 
is remarkable for the force with which she can squirt 
out formic acid over her adversary. 
But, in whatever way they are carried on, these 
ant-battles are fierce and bitter, for ants have very 
few enemies but those of their own kind, so that 
* Polyergus rufescens. 
