After reading this account of expeditions undertaken by ants for so extraordinary a purpose, you will be curious to know how the slaves are treated in the nests of these marauders—whether they live happily, or labour under an oppressive yoke. You must recollect that they are not carried off, like our negroes, at an age when the amor patriæ and all the charities of life which bind them to their country, kindred and friends, are in their full strength, but in what may be called the helpless days of infancy, or in their state of repose, before they can have formed any associations or imbibed any notions that render one place and society more dear to them than another. Preconceived ideas, therefore, do not exist to influence their happiness, which must altogether depend upon the treatment which they experience at the hands of their new masters. Here the goodness of Providence is conspicuous; which, although it has gifted these creatures with an instinct so extraordinary, and seemingly so unnatural, has not made it a source of misery to the objects of it.
You will here, perhaps, imagine that I have not sufficiently taken into consideration the anxiety and privations undergone by the poor neuters, in beholding those foster-children, for which they have all along manifested such tender solicitude, thus violently snatched from them: but when you reflect that they are the common property of the whole colony, and that, consequently, there can scarcely be any separate attachment to particular individuals, you will admit that, after the fright and horror of the conflict are over, and their enemies have retreated, they are not likely to experience the poignant affliction felt by parents when deprived of their children; especially when you further consider, that most probably some of their brood are rescued from the general pillage; or at any rate their females are left uninjured, to restore the diminished population of their colonies, and to supply them with those objects of attention, the larvæ, &c. so necessary to that development of their instincts in which consists their happiness.
But to return to the point from which I digressed.—The negro and miner ants suffer no diminution of happiness, and are exposed to no unusual hardships and oppression in consequence of being transplanted into a foreign nest. Their life is passed in much the same employments as would have occupied it in their native residence. They build or repair the common dwelling; they make excursions to collect food; they attend upon the females; they feed them and the larvæ; and they pay the necessary attention to the daily sunning of the eggs, larvæ, and pupæ. Besides this, they have also to feed their masters and to carry them about the nest. This you will say is a serious addition to the ordinary occupations of their own colonies: but when you consider the greater division of labour in these mixed societies, which sometimes unite both negroes and miners in the same dwelling, so that three distinct races live together, from their vast numbers so far exceeding those of the native nest, you will not think this too severe employment for so industrious an animal.
But you will here ask, perhaps—"Do the masters take no part in these domestic employments? At least, surely, they direct their slaves, and see that they keep to their work?"—No such thing, I assure you—the sole motive for their predatory excursions seems to be mere laziness and hatred of labour. Active and intrepid as they are in the field, at all other times they are the most helpless animals that can be imagined;—unwilling to feed themselves, or even to walk, their indolence exceeds that of the sloth itself. So entirely dependent, indeed, are they upon their negroes for every thing, that upon some occasions the latter seem to be the masters, and exercise a kind of authority over them. They will not suffer them, for instance, to go out before the proper season, or alone; and if they return from their excursions without their usual booty, they give them a very indifferent reception, showing their displeasure, which however soon ceases, by attacking them; and when they attempt to enter the nest, dragging them out. To ascertain what they would do when obliged to trust to their own exertions, Huber shut up thirty of the rufescent ants in a glazed box, supplying them with larvæ and pupæ of their own kind, with the addition of several negro pupæ, excluding very carefully all their slaves, and placing some honey in a corner of their prison. Incredible as it may seem, they made no attempt to feed themselves: and though at first they paid some attention to their larvæ, carrying them here and there, as if too great a charge they soon laid them down again; most of them died of hunger in less than two days; and the few that remained alive appeared extremely weak and languid. At length, commiserating their condition, he admitted a single negro; and this little active creature by itself re-established order—made a cell in the earth; collected the larvæ and placed them in it; assisted the pupæ that were ready to be developed; and preserved the life of the neuter rufescents that still survived. What a picture of beneficent industry, contrasted with the baleful effects of sloth, does this interesting anecdote afford! Another experiment which he tried made the contrast equally striking. He put a large portion of one of these mixed colonies into a woollen bag, in the mouth of which he fixed a small tube of wood, glazed at the top, which at the other end was fitted to the entrance of a kind of hive. The second day the tube was crowded with negroes going and returning:—the indefatigable diligence and activity manifested by them in transporting the young brood and their rufescent masters, whose bodies were suspended upon their mandibles, was astonishing. These last took no active part in the busy scene, while their slaves showed the greatest anxiety about them, generally carrying them into the hive; and if they sometimes contented themselves with depositing them at the entrance of the tube, it was that they might use greater dispatch in fetching the rest. The rufescent when thus set down remained for a moment coiled up without motion, and then leisurely unrolling itself, looked all around, as if it was quite at a loss what direction to take;—it next went up to the negroes, and by the play of its antennæ seemed to implore their succour, till one of them attending to it conducted it into the hive.
Beings so entirely dependent, as these masters are upon their slaves, for every necessary, comfort and enjoyment of their life, can scarcely be supposed to treat them with rigour or unkindness:—so far from this, it is evident from the preceding details, that they rather look up to them, and are in some degree under their control.
The above observations, with respect to the indolence of our slave-dealers, relate principally to the rufescent species; for the sanguine ants are not altogether so listless and helpless; they assist their negroes in the construction of their nests, they collect their sweet fluid from the Aphides; and one of their most usual occupations is to lie in wait for a small species of ant, on which they feed; and when their nest is menaced by an enemy, they show their value for these faithful servants by carrying them down into the lowest apartments, as to a place of the greatest security. Sometimes even the rufescents rouse themselves from the torpor that usually benumbs them. In one instance, when they wished to emigrate from their own to a deserted nest, they reversed what usually takes place on such occasions, and carried all their negroes themselves to the spot they had chosen. At the first foundation also of their societies by impregnated females, there is good reason for thinking, that, like those of other species[86], they take upon themselves the whole charge of the nascent colony. I must not here omit a most extraordinary anecdote related by M. Huber. He put into one of his artificial formicaries pupæ of both species of the slave-collecting ants, which, under the care of some negroes introduced with them, arrived at their imago state, and lived together under the same roof in the most perfect amity.
These facts show what effects education will produce even upon insects; that it will impart to them a new bias, and modify in some respects their usual instincts, rendering them familiar with objects which, had they been educated at home, they would have feared, and causing them to love those whom in that case they would have abhorred.—It occasions, however, no further change in their character, since the master and slave, brought up with the same care and under the same superintendence, are associated in the mixed formicary under laws entirely opposite[87].
Unparalleled and unique in the animal kingdom as this history may appear, you will scarcely deem the next I have to relate less singular and less worthy of admiration. That ants should have their milch cattle is as extraordinary as that they should have slaves. Here, perhaps, you may again feel a fit of incredulity shake you;—but the evidence for the fact I am now stating being abundant and satisfactory, I flatter myself it will not shake you long.
The loves of the ants and the aphides (for these last are the kine in question) have long been celebrated; and that there is a connexion between them you may at any time, in the proper season, convince yourself; for you will always find the former very busy on those trees and plants on which the latter abound: and if you examine more closely, you will discover that their object in thus attending upon them is to obtain the saccharine fluid, which may well be denominated their milk[88], that they secrete.
This fluid, which is scarcely inferior to honey in sweetness, issues in limpid drops from the abdomen of these insects, not only by the ordinary passage, but also by two setiform tubes placed, one on each side, just above it. Their sucker being inserted in the tender bark, is without intermission employed in absorbing the sap, which, after it has passed through the system, they keep continually discharging by these organs. When no ants attend them, by a certain jerk of the body, which takes place at regular intervals, they ejaculate it to a distance: but when the ants are at hand, watching the moment when the aphides emit their fluid, they seize and suck it down immediately. This, however, is the least of their talents; for they absolutely possess the art of making them yield it at their pleasure; or, in other words, of milking them. On this occasion their antennæ are their fingers; with these they pat the abdomen of the aphis on each side alternately, moving them very briskly; a little drop of fluid immediately appears, which the ant takes into its mouth, one species (Myrmica rubra) conducting it with its antennæ, which are somewhat swelled at the end. When it has thus milked one, it proceeds to another, and so on, till being satiated it returns to the nest.