Huber wanted to learn what would be the result if the red ants found themselves without servants. Would the big creatures know how to supply their own needs? He put a few of the red insects in a glass case, having some honey in a corner. They did not go near it. They did not know enough to feed themselves. Some of them died of starvation, with food before them. Then he put into the case one black ant. It went straight to the honey, and with it fed its big, starving, silly masters. Here was a wonder, truly!
The little blacks exert in many things a moral force whose signs are plainly visible. For example, those tiny wise creatures will not give permission to any of the great red ones to go out alone. Nor are these at liberty to go out even in a body, if their small helpers fear a storm, or if the day is far advanced. When a raid proves fruitless, the soldiers coming back without any living booty are forbidden by the blacks to enter the city, and are ordered to attack some other village.
Not wishing to rely entirely on his own conclusions, Huber asked one of the great naturalists of Switzerland, Jurine, to decide whether or not mistakes had been made regarding these customs of the ants. This witness, and indeed others, found that Huber's reports were true.
"Yet, after all," says Huber, "I still doubted. But on a later day I again saw in the park of Fontainebleau, near Paris, the same workings of ant life and wisdom. A well-known naturalist was with me then, and his conclusions were the same as mine.
"It was half-past four in the afternoon of a very warm day. From a pile of stones there came forth a column of about five hundred reddish ants. They marched rapidly toward a field of turf, order in their ranks being kept by their sergeants. These watched the flanks, and would not permit any to straggle.
"Suddenly the army disappeared. There was no sign of an ant-hill in the turf, but, after awhile, we detected a little hole. Through this the ants had vanished. We supposed it was an entrance to their home. In a minute they showed us that our supposition was incorrect. They issued in a throng, nearly every one of them carrying a small black captive.
"From the short time they had taken, it was plain that they knew the place and the weakness of its citizens. Perhaps it was not the reds' first attack on this city of the little blacks. These swarmed out in great numbers; and, truly, I pitied them. They did not attempt to fight. They seemed terror-stricken, and made no attempt to oppose the warrior ants, except by clinging to them. One of the marauders was stopped thus, but a comrade that was free relieved him of his burden, and thereupon the black ant let go his grasp.
"It was in fact a painful sight. The soldiers succeeded in carrying off nearly five hundred children. About three feet from the entrance to the ant-hill the plundered black parents ceased to follow the red robbers, and resigned themselves to the loss of their young. The whole raid did not occupy more than ten minutes.
"The parties were, as we have seen, very unequal in strength, and the attack was clearly an outrage—an outrage no doubt often repeated. The big red ants, knowing their power, played the part of tyrants; and, whenever they wanted more slaves, despoiled the small weak blacks of their greatest treasures—their children."
Michelet