NEST OF RUSSET ANTS.
One day, however, I saw a young ant thrust forth its head, still somewhat pale, at a gate of the city, then step across the threshold, and march along the summit of the ant-hill. The escapade, however, was not long permitted. A nurse encountering the fugitive, seized it by the top of its head, and conducted it gently towards a neighbouring entrance.
The child resisted; it suffered itself to be dragged along, and on the way coming in contact with a small piece of wood, profited by it to stiffen itself, and exhaust its conductor's strength. The latter, always keeping its temper, let go for a moment, executed a flank movement, and then returned to the charge, until its nursling, tired out, was compelled to yield obedience.
As soon as the young are strong enough, they have to be brought acquainted with the interior labyrinth of the city, the suburbs, the avenues which lead to the outer world, and the neighbouring roads. Then they are trained to hunt, are accustomed to provide for themselves, to live hap-hazard and upon little or any kind of food. Temperance is the basis of the whole commonwealth.
The ant, not being fastidious, but accepting all descriptions of food, is from this very cause the less anxious, restless, and selfish. It is very wrong to call it a miser. Far from being so, it seems solely intent upon multiplying in its city the number of its co-partners. In its generous maternal care of those whom it has not begotten, in its solicitude for those little ones of yesterday which to-day become young citizens, originates a feeling quite novel and very rare among insects,—that of fraternity. (See the works of Latreille and Huber.)
The obscurest and most curious point of their education is, undoubtedly, the communication of language, which reminds the observer of the forms of freemasonry. It enables them to transmit really complicated directions to their legions, and to change in a moment the march of a whole column, the action of an entire populace.
This language principally consists in the touch of the antennæ, or in a light collision of the mandibles. They urge (or perhaps persuade) by blows of the head against the thorax. Finally, they sometimes carry off the auditor, who makes no resistance, and transport him to some designated place or object. In this case, which undoubtedly is both difficult to believe and explain, the convinced auditor unites with the other, and both together carry off other witnesses, which in their turn perform upon others—the number continually increasing—the same operation. Our parliamentary phrases, "to carry away the crowd," "to transport the hearer," are by no means mere metaphors among the ants!