In neither case has Sir John Lubbock ever seen an ant take
the slightest notice of the presence of these strange fellow-lodgers.
'One might almost imagine,' he says, 'that they had the cap of
invisibility.' Yet it is quite clear that the ants deliberately sanction
the residence of the weevils and woodlice in their nests, for any
unauthorised intruder would immediately be set upon and massacred
outright.
Sir John Lubbock suggests that they may perhaps be tolerated as
scavengers: or, again, it is possible that they may prey upon the eggs
or larvae of some of the parasites to whose attacks the ants are subject.
In the first case, their use would be similar to that of the wild dogs
in Constantinople or the common black John-crow vultures in tropical
America: in the second case, they would be about equivalent to our own
cats or to the hedgehog often put in farmhouse kitchens to keep down
cockroaches.
The crowning glory of owning slaves, which many philosophic Americans
(before the war) showed to be the highest and noblest function of the
most advanced humanity, has been attained by more than one variety of
anthood. Our great English horse-ant is a moderate slaveholder; but the
big red ant of Southern Europe carries the domestic institution many
steps further. It makes regular slave-raids upon the nests of the small
brown ants, and carries off the young in their pupa condition. By-and-by
the brown ants hatch out in the strange nest, and never having known any
other life except that of slavery, accommodate themselves to it readily
enough.
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