Half Hours with a Naturalist Volume 20 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 Excerpt: ...other species of ant, all of which were contentedly playing the part of domestic servants. Sometimes they even assail the nests of their own species. Mr. Bignell showed me a couple of specimens of the Wood Ant, both workers, one of which had been cap tured by the other, and was being carried into the nest by the captor. The nest into which the ant was being carried was by far the largest in the neighbourhood, and it really seemed as if its rulers would suffer no rival establishments, and were merging them in the one great central nest. There are some species of ants which are absolutely dependent on their slaves, and would die but for their help. Such, for example, is the Polyergus rufescens of Southern Europe, popularly called the Slave-maker. This insect carries out to the fullest extent the idea prevalent in the Middle Ages, that labour of any kind is a degradation. Fighting was the only occupation worthy of a noble; and fighting is not simply the only occupation worthy of a Slave-maker Ant, but is the only one which it is able to follow. It can fight most fiercely, but it can do nothing else. On its slave-hunting expeditions it is fierce, active, and formidable. At home it is helpless. It can invade the dwellings of other ants and carry them off as slaves, but without the help of those slaves it would die. It cannot make its own dwelling, it cannot provide supplies of daily food, it cannot bring up its own young, and, worst of all, it cannot even feed itself, for its jaws, although formidable as weapons, seem incapable of picking up food. All these offices have to be performed by the slaves. If the creatures multiply and require a fresh dwelling, the slaves make it for them, and actually carry their masters to the new nest, the latter being incapable of...