od 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 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 pupae 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 both
nests, the little ants