290 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
with it at once to her own nest. In this way the 
whole red army travelled to and fro, carrying away 
cocoon after cocoon, and delivering them over to the 
care of other black ants in the nest at home, which 
had been captured in the same way the year before, 
and had now settled down as nurses of the establish- 
ment. These ants took the cocoons, and watched 
and tended them, and by and by, when they were 
opened, the black children took to the red-ant nest 
as their home, and worked with the rest. Except 
that they are forcibly seized in their infancy, these 
black ants can scarcely be called slaves, for master 
and servant live together like equals, only that the 
black ants generally remain more indoors, while the 
red ones go out to seek food. 
But how have these red ants, which are in many 
\vays some of the cleverest of their kind, learnt to 
steal young black ones, to help them in their 
work ? Mr. Darwin suggests the answer. It is a 
common practice with ants to carry the cocoons 
of their enemies into their nests to eat them, and 
they tear open the cocoon to feed on the insect 
within. Now, nothing is more likely than that 
some of the black -ant cocoons, thus carried in, 
should be neglected, till the ants within them were 
perfect, and then, when they came out active and 
vigorous, they would be well received, as ants born 
in the nest generally are, and would mix with the 
red ones, and prove very useful. Is it too much 
to imagine, that thus by degrees the intelligent red 
ants should come to understand that it was better to 
have the help of the black ants than to eat them, 
and should learn to fetch them in numbers to help 
