BATTLE BETWEEN ANTS.
Whilst reclining one beautiful May afternoon in the shade of an oak that stood on the outskirts of a thicket, my attention was arrested by the activity and bustle presented by a colony of yellow ants, which proved to be the Formica flava, so common everywhere.
Scattered indiscriminately about were numberless larvæ in various stages of growth, and not a few immobile pupæ, that had been brought up from subterranean domiciles by thoughtful nurses, while here and there were a dozen or more ants, but recently escaped from their mummy-cases, basking in the sun’s warmth, preparatory to entering upon the duties of the formicarium.
The very picture of restlessness and anxiety were these full-grown neuters. That something was transpiring, or was about to transpire, seemed not unlikely, for ovæ, larvæ and pupæ were being quickly carried to places of concealment in the earth, or hustled away among the entangling and interlacing grasses.
Looking about for the cause of all this excitement, the truth at once became painfully apparent. Three large, burly ants, representatives of Formica subterranea, a black species that is everywhere abundant in wooded regions, had intruded their obnoxious presence into the happy colony, bent, as it was evident, on pillage or slaughter.
Were plunder the inspiring motive, these giant invaders were not slow to learn that their weaker kin, though lacking their strength, could more than match them in cunning and stratagem.
Not daring to attack the foe, and being unwilling that any of their number should be led into slavery, or suffer aught at the hands of others, they immediately set to work to destroy all whom it was impossible to protect.
BATTLE BETWEEN ANTS.
Young Destroyed by Nurses.
Detailed as most of the neuters seemed to be in looking after the wants of the immature, there were a few observed running hither and thither and seizing in their jaws the newly-developed, not to bear them out of the reach of danger, as was at first supposed, but to kill them so as to prevent them from falling a living prey into the hands of the enemy.