ANTS AND THEIR HELPLESS CHILDREN. 291 
them in their work ? One thing is certain, that they 
know their own interest now, for if by chance a 
female winged ant comes out of the stolen cocoons, 
she is killed at once by her red masters, who know 
that if she lived and laid eggs, these would be tended 
by the slaves, and the nest would soon become a 
black-ant city. 
But now see how true it is, even among insects, 
that those who always look to others to save them 
trouble, become weak, useless, and contemptible, for 
though the slave -making ants which we have in 
England * work with their slaves, there are others 
living abroad,f which have become so dependent 
upon their black servants, that they can neither build 
their nests nor tend their young, nor even feed them- 
selves. It is a mockery to call the neuters of these 
ants " workers," for they can do no work any more 
than the males and females, but they are " soldiers," 
for the one thing they can do is to go in great 
hordes and fight the black ants, and steal their 
cocoons. Here their pointed mandibles (which have 
lost their toothed edge, and are of no use for other 
work) come into play as deadly weapons in crushing 
the brains of their enemies (see p. 286), and their 
warlike expeditions are bold and successful. For 
the rest they are quite helpless ; it is the negro ants 
which fetch provisions, feed the grubs, take care 
of the princesses, build the rooms and galleries, and 
even feed their lazy masters. Huber once took 
thirty of these red ants with their grubs and cocoons, 
and put them in a box with a supply of honey, but 
though the food lay close to them, they made no 
* Formica sanguined. t Polyergus rufescens. 
