Page - 277 - in The Origin of Species
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Text of the Page - 277 -
SLAVE-MAKIKG INSTINCT 277
During the year i860, 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, the
slaves in Switzerland 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 ofiice is to search for aphides. This differ-
ence in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two
countries, probably depends merely on the slaves being cap-
tured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in England.
One day I fortunately witnessed a migration of F. san-
guinea from one nest to another, and it was a most interest-
ing spectacle to behold the masters carefully carrying their
slaves in their jaws instead of being carried by them, as in
the case of F. rufescens. 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 ap-
proached 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 pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug up a
small parcel of the pupae 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 pupx of another species, F. flava, with a few of these
little yellow ants still clinging to the fragments of their
nest. This species is sometimes, though rarely, made into
slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith. Althougli so
small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it
ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my
back to the
book The Origin of Species"
The Origin of Species
- Title
- The Origin of Species
- Author
- Charles Darwin
- Publisher
- P. F. Collier & Son
- Location
- New York
- Date
- 1909
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 10.5 x 16.4 cm
- Pages
- 568
- Keywords
- Evolutionstheorie, Evolution, Theory of Evolution, Naturwissenschaft, Natural Sciences
- Categories
- International
- Naturwissenschaften Biologie
Table of contents
- EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 5
- AN HISTORICAL SKETCH of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species 9
- INTRODUCTION 21
- Variation under Domestication 25
- Variation under Nature 58
- Struggle for Existence 76
- Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest 93
- Laws of Variation 145
- Difficulties of the Theory 178
- Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection 219
- Instinct 262
- Hybridism 298
- On the Imperfection of the Geological Record 333
- On the Geological Succession of Organic Beinss 364
- Geographical Distribution 395
- Geographical Distribution - continued 427
- Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs 450
- Recapitulation and Conclusion 499
- GLOSSARY 531
- INDEX 541