Fig. 367.—An Ant milking Aphides or Plant-lice (magnified).
The possession of a flock of plant-lice is sometimes a subject of discord, and becomes a casus belli between two neighbouring ant-hills. But, usually, the war has for its object to make prisoners in other nests, and to carry off part of the inhabitants as slaves. This is the origin of mixed ant-hills, which, independently of their natural founders, contain one or two foreign species, helots whom the conquerors have taken away from their birth-place, to make of them auxiliaries and slaves. In these mixed ant-hills the species imported occasionally exceed in number the original population, as it happens sometimes in those ships which are used in the slave trade, and on which the slaves are often found in greater numbers than the sailors composing the crew. The phalanx of ants reduced to a state of slavery pay all sorts of attentions to their masters. They lick them, brush them, caress them, carry them on their backs, feed them—good and faithful servants that they are—and even rear their progeny. The masters impose on their slaves all sorts of work. They only reserve for themselves the making of war. From time to time they undertake expeditions against some neighbouring ants' nest. If they are conquered and come back without bringing with them any prisoners, the slaves or auxiliaries are sulky to them, and will not allow them for some time to enter the nest. If, on the contrary, they return loaded with booty, they flatter them, give them food, and relieve them of their prisoners, which they lead away into the interior of the fortress. The warlike tribes, however, never carry off any other but the larvæ and nymphs of workers from the ant-hills they plunder. These young captives get used to their kidnappers: brought up in fear of their masters, they never think of abandoning them.
Fig. 368.—Russet Ants (Polyergus rufescens).
Two species constitute the warrior tribes which form societies mixed with the species they reduce to slavery. They are the Russet Ant ([Fig. 368]) and the Blood-red Ant ([Fig. 369]). They always attack the nests of the Ashy-black (Formica fusca) and the Miners.
