hand, may be constantly seen bringing in materials for the nest, and
food of all kinds. During the present year, however, in the month
of July, I came across a community with an unusually large stock of
slaves, and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving
the nest, and marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir-tree,
twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in
search of aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample
opportunities for observation, in Switzerland the slaves habitually
work with their masters in making the nest, and they alone open and
close the doors in the morning and evening; and, as Huber expressly
states, their principal office is to search for aphides. This
difference in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two
countries, probably depends merely on the slaves being captured in
greater numbers in Switzerland than in England.
One day I fortunately chanced to witness a migration from one nest to
another, and it was a most interesting spectacle to behold the masters
carefully carrying, as Huber has described, their slaves in their jaws.
Another day my attention was struck by about a score of the
slave-makers haunting the same spot, and evidently not in search of
food; they approached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent
community of the slave species (F. fusca); sometimes as many as three
of these ants clinging to the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea.
The latter ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried their
dead bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine yards distant; but they
were prevented from getting any pup to rear as slaves. I then dug up a
small parcel of the pup of F. fusca from another nest, and put them
down on a bare spot near the place of combat; they were eagerly seized,
and carried off by the tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all,
they had been victorious in their late combat.
At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel of the pup of
another species, F. flava, with a few of these little yellow ants still
clinging to the fragments of the nest. This species is sometimes,
though rarely, made into slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith.
Although so small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it
ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my surprise
an independent community of F. flava under a stone beneath a nest of
the slave-making F. sanguinea; and when I had accidentally disturbed
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