LXI.—ANTS AND THEIR SLAVES.
Michelet.
Peter Huber, the son of the celebrated observer of the manners and habits of bees, walking one day in a field near Geneva, saw on the ground a strong detachment of reddish-colored ants on the march, and bethought himself of following them. On the flanks of the column, as if to dress its ranks, a few sped to and fro in eager haste. After marching for about a quarter of an hour, they halted before an ant-hill belonging to some small black ants, and a desperate struggle took place at its gates.
A small number of blacks offered a brave resistance; but the great majority of the people thus assailed fled through the gates remotest from the scene of combat, carrying away their young. It was just these which were the cause of the strife, what the blacks most feared being the theft of their offspring. And soon the assailants, who had succeeded in penetrating into the city, might be seen emerging from it, loaded with the young black progeny.
The red ants, encumbered with their living booty, left the unfortunate city in the desolation of its great loss, and resumed the road to their own habitation, whither their astonished and almost breathless observer followed them. But how was his astonishment augmented when, at the threshold of the red ants’ community, a small population of black ants came forward to receive the plunder, welcoming with visible joy these children of their own race, which would perpetuate it in the foreign lands!
This, then, is a mixed city, where the strong warrior-ants live on a perfectly good understanding with the little blacks. But what of the latter? Huber speedily discovered that, in fact, they do everything. They alone build; they alone bring up the young red ants and the captives of their own species; they alone administer the affairs of the community, provide its supplies of food, and wait upon and feed their red masters, who, like great infant giants, indolently allow their little attendants to feed them at the mouth. No other occupations are theirs but war, theft, and kidnapping. No other movements in the intervals than to wander about lazily, and bask in the sunshine at the doors of their barracks.
Huber made an experiment. He was desirous of observing what would be the result if the great red ants found themselves without servants,—whether they would know how to supply their own wants. He put a few into a glass case, and put some honey for them in a corner, so that they had nothing to do but to take it. Miserable the degradation, cruel the punishment with which slavery afflicts the enslavers! They did not touch it; they seemed to know nothing; they had become so grossly ignorant that they could no longer feed themselves. Some of them died from starvation, with food before them!