CHAPTER III.
THE ANTS:--THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES.
When I learned for the first time, from the pages of Huber, the strange and prodigious fact that certain ants keep slaves, I was greatly astonished--as everybody has been by this singular revelation--but I was especially saddened and wounded.
What! I turn aside from the history of man in search of innocence. I hope at least to discover among the brute creation the even-handed justice of nature, the primitive rectitude of the plan of creation. I seek in this people, whom I had previously loved and esteemed for their laboriousness and temperateness, the severe and touching image of republican virtues--and I find among them this thing without a name!
What a joy, what a triumph for the partisans of slavery, for all the friends of evil! Hell and tyranny, laugh ye, and make merry! A black spot is revealed in the brightness of Nature.
I had flung aside Huber, and no book had ever seemed to me more hateful. Pardon, illustrious observer! your grandfather and your father had enraptured and charmed me. The first of the clan--Huber, the great historian of the bees--has inspired with new warmth the religion of man, and lifted up his heart. But Huber of the ants has broken mine.
It was, nevertheless, a duty to resume my perusal of his work, and examine it more attentively. An immoral, a Machiavellian, and a perverse insect is worthy of investigation.
But, in the first place, let us make a distinction. A portion of these pretended slaves may only be cattle.
It is enough to look at the ants, thin to an excess, brilliant, and varnished, to conclude that they are the driest and most parched of beings. Their singular acridity has been established by chemical researches, and science has contrived to extract the mordant formic acid from their bodies. Sometimes, when they are in peril, they hurl it at their enemies like a venom. Not a few species employ it in drying, blackening, and almost burning the trees where they establish their abodes. Is not a substance so corrosive for others equally dangerous to themselves? I should be tempted to think so, and to this extreme acridity should attribute their greediness for honey and other lubricating substances. I submit my hypothesis to the consideration of the scientific.
The ants of Mexico, in a specially favoured climate, have two classes of workmen,--one charged with the duty of seeking provisions; the other, inactive and sedentary, entrusted with the work of elaborating them, and making out of them a kind of honey for the common nourishment.
The ants of our temperate climates, for the most part incapable of making honey, satisfy their imperative need of it by licking the honey-dew found upon certain grubs, which, without labour, by the mere fact of their organization, extract saccharine juices from all species of plants. The transmission of this honey to the ants is effected quietly, and, as it were, by mutual agreement.
It operates by a kind of titillation or gentle traction, such as we exercise upon the cow. These grubs, placed at the extreme limit of animal life--viviparous in summer, oviparous in autumn--are very humble creatures, and prodigiously inferior in intelligence to the ants. The magnifying-glass reveals them to the observer as always bent, and always engaged in feeding. Their attitude is that of the cattle. They are, in truth, the milch-cows of the ants; and that they may always profit by them, the latter frequently transport them to their ant-hill, where they live together on admirably good terms. The ants take great care of the grubs, superintend the incubation, and nourish the adults with their favourite vegetables.
In situations where great difficulty would be experienced in transporting and installing them, they empark them on the ground by throwing up around their field of pasture a fence of twigs and cylinders of earth. This may justly be termed the grazing-field, the _chalet_ of the ants; which repair to it at certain hours to milk their herds, and sometimes carry their young thither for the easier distribution of the food. I am frequently present, especially in the evening, at these Dutch-like scenes, which have hitherto found no Paul Potter among the ants to depict them.
Observe that these grubs, whether transported to the ant-hill or emparked on their favourite feeding-ground, possess the inestimable advantage of having their safety guaranteed by the redoubtable republic. The "lion of the grubs" (as a small worm is called), and other wild beasts, if they dared approach the herd, would feel very cruelly their strong mandibles and burning formic acid.
So far, then, we have no reproach to make; the grubs are cattle, and not slaves. The ants do exactly what we do; they make use of the privilege of superior beings, but exercise it with more gentleness and management than does man.
But we now come to a more delicate consideration. There are two kinds of ants, of a tolerable size, but otherwise of no peculiar distinction, which employ as servants, nurses, and cooks, certain small ants endowed with more skill and ingenuity.
This strange fact, which ought apparently to change our ideas of animal morality, was discovered early in the present century. Pierre Huber, the son of the celebrated observer of the manners and habits of bees, walking one day in a field near Geneva, saw on the ground a strong detachment of reddish-coloured ants on the march, and bethought himself of following them. On the flanks of the column, as if to dress its ranks, a few speed to and fro in eager haste. After marching for about a quarter of an hour, they halt before an ant-hill belonging to the small black ant, and a desperate struggle takes place at its gates.
A small number of the blacks offer a brave resistance; but the great majority of the people thus assailed flee through the gates remotest from the scene of combat, carrying away their young. It was just these which were the cause of the strife; what the blacks most justly feared was the theft of their offspring. And soon the assailants, who had succeeded in penetrating into, the city, might be seen emerging from it loaded with the young black progeny. It was an exact resemblance of a descent of slave-dealers on the coast of Africa.
The red ants, encumbered with their living booty, left the unfortunate city in the desolation of its great loss, and resumed the road to their own habitation, whither their astonished and almost breathless observer followed them. But how was his astonishment augmented when, at the-threshold of the red ants' community, a small population of black ants came forward to receive the plunder, welcoming with visible joy these children of their own race, which, undoubtedly, would perpetuate it in the foreign land.
This, then, is a mixed city, where the strong warrior-ants live in a perfectly good understanding with the little blacks. But what do the latter? Huber speedily discovered that, in effect, they do everything. They alone build; they alone bring up the young red ants and the captives of their own species; they alone administer the affairs of the community, provide its supplies of food, wait upon and nourish their red masters, who, like great infant giants, indolently allow their little attendants to feed them at the mouth. No other occupations are theirs but war, theft, and kidnapping. No other movements in the intervals than to wander about lazily, and bask in the sunshine at the door of their barracks.
The most curious circumstance is, that these civilized helots really love their great barbarous warriors, and carefully tend their children, gladly and cheerfully perform their tasks of servitude, and, more, encourage the extension of their slavery and the abduction of the little blacks. Does not all this wear the appearance of a free adhesion to the established order of things?
And who knows but that the joy and pride of governing the strong and tyrannizing over their tyrants, may be for the little blacks an inner liberty--an exquisite and sovereign freedom--far superior to any pleasure they could have derived from the equality of their native country?
Huber made an experiment. He was desirous of observing what would be the result if the great red ants found themselves without servants, and if they would know how to supply their own wants. He thought, perhaps, that the degenerate creatures might be inspired and uplifted by the maternal love which is so strong among the ants.
He put a few into a glass case, and with them some _nymphs_. Instinctively they began to move them about and to cradle them after their fashion; but soon discovered (big and robust as they, nevertheless, were) that the weight was too much for them; they accordingly left them on the ground, and coolly abandoned them. In truth, they abandoned themselves. Huber put some honey for them in a corner, so that they had nothing to do but to take it. Miserable the degradation, cruel the punishment with which slavery afflicts the enslavers! They did not touch it; they seemed to know nothing; they had become so grossly ignorant and indolent that they could no longer feed themselves. Some of them died from starvation, with food before them!
Huber, to complete the experiment, then introduced into the case one black ant. The presence of this sagacious helot changed the face of things, and re-established life and order. He went straight to the honey; he fed the great dying simpletons; he dug a hole in the ground, placed in it the eggs, prepared the incubation, watched over the nymphs (or _maillots_), and restored to life and happiness the little people, who, becoming industrious in their turn, seconded the efforts of their nurse. Felicitous influence of genius! A single individual had re-created the city.
The observer then understood that with such a superiority of intelligence these helots might, in reality, wear the chains of servitude very lightly, and perhaps govern their masters. A persevering study proved to him that such was, indeed, the case. The little blacks in many things carry a moral authority whose signs are very visible; they do not, for example, permit the great red ants to go out alone on useless expeditions, and compel them to return into the city. Nor are they even at liberty to go out in a body, if their wise little helots do not think the weather favourable, if they fear a storm, or if the day is far advanced. When an excursion proves unsuccessful, and they return without children, the little blacks are stationed at the gates of the city to forbid their ingress, and send them back to the combat; nay more, you may see them take the cowards by the collar, and force them to retrace their route.
These are astounding facts; but such as they are, they were seen by our illustrious observer. He could not trust his eyes, and summoned one of the greatest naturalists of Sweden--M. Jurine--to his side, to make new investigations, and decide whether he had been deceived. This witness, and others who afterwards pursued the same course of experiments, found that his discoveries were entirely accurate.
Yet--shall I dare to confess it?--after all these weighty testimonies I still doubted. Let me say, I _hoped_ that the fact, without being absolutely false, had not been correctly observed. But on a certain occasion I saw it--with my own eyes saw it--in the park of Fontainebleau. I was accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, an excellent observer, and he too saw exactly what I saw.
It was half-past four in the afternoon of a very warm day. From a pile of stones emerged a column of from four to five hundred red or reddish ants, precisely the same colour as the wing-cases of the gnat. They marched rapidly towards a piece of turf, kept in order by their sergeants or "pivot-men," whom we saw on the flanks, and who would not permit any one to straggle. (This is a circumstance known to everybody who has seen a file of ants on the march.) But the novel and astonishing thing to me was, that gradually those who were at the head drew near to each other, and advanced only by turning; they passed and repassed the whirling crowd, describing concentric circles; a manoeuvre evidently fit to produce enthusiasm, and to augment energy,--each, by contact, electrifying himself with the ardour of all.
Suddenly the revolving mass seemed to sink and disappear. There was no sign of ant-hills in the turf; but after a while we detected an almost imperceptible orifice, through which we saw them vanish in less time than it takes me to write these words. We asked ourselves if it was an entrance to their domicile; if they had re-entered their city. In a minute at the utmost they gave us a reply, and showed us our mistake. They issued in a throng, each carrying a nymph on its mandibles.
From the short time they had taken, it was evident that they had a previous knowledge of the localities, the place where the eggs were deposited, the time when they were to assemble, and the degree of resistance they had to expect. Perhaps it was not their first journey.
The little blacks on whom the red ants made this _razzia_ sallied out in considerable numbers; and I truly pitied them. They did not attempt to fight. They seemed frightened and stunned. They only endeavoured to delay the ravishers by clinging to them. A red ant was thus arrested; but another red one, who was free, relieved him of his burden, and thereupon the black ant relaxed his grasp. In fine, it was a pitiful scene for the blacks. They offered no serious resistance. The five hundred red ants succeeded in carrying off nearly three hundred children. At two or three feet from the hole, the blacks ceased to pursue them, abandoned all hope, and resigned themselves to their fate. All this did not occupy ten minutes between the departure and the return. The two parties were very unequal. It was evidently a facile abuse of strength,--very probably an outrage often repeated,--a tyranny of the great, who levied a tribute of children from their poor little neighbours.
Let us now endeavour to understand this shocking and hideous fact. It is peculiar to certain species; it is a particular incident, an exceptional case, yet related on the whole to a general law of the life of the ants. Their societies are founded on the principle of the _division of labour_, and the _speciality of functions_. The ant-hill, in its normal state, comprehends, as we know, three classes:--
1st. The great multitude, composed of laborious virgins, who confine themselves to the love of the children of the commonwealth, and perform all the work of the community;
2nd. The fecund females, feeble, soft, and, unintelligent; and,
3rd. Some little shrivelled males, who are born only to die.
The first class is, in truth and reality, the people. But in this people you find two industrial divisions, two great bodies of workmen. The one executes all the more arduous tasks, such as the transportation of heavy burdens, and the far and perilous hunt after provisions,--and, at need, carry on war. The other, nearly always at home, receives the materials, superintends the domestic economy, and undertakes the principal duty of the republic,--the education of the young.
The two corporations, that of the purveyors and warriors,--that of the nurses and tutors,--are, in every tribe, of unequal size, but identical in species, colour, and organization.
Between the big warriors and the little industrials the moral equality seems perfect. If there were any difference, we should say that the class of the little ants, who build up the city and train up the people, is the more important, the life, genius, and soul of the state; the one which of itself could, at need, constitute the republic.
M. Huber has discovered two species (the red-brown and red) who do not possess this essential class, this fundamental element of the ant communities. It would not surprise us if the accessory or warrior class were wanting. But here, in reality, it is the basis which we find deficient,--the vital foundation,--the _raison d'être_. We are, therefore, not so much astonished at the depraved resource by which these red ants subsist, as at the monstrous lacuna which compels them to adopt it.
There is a mystery in the matter which we cannot at present explain, but which would probably be cleared up if we could arrive at a knowledge of the general history of the species, its changes, and migrations. Who does not know the modification effected in animals, both externally and internally, in their forms and their manners, by the displacements they undergo? Who, for example, would recognize the brother of our bull-dog--of the St. Bernard--of the giant dog of Persia, which could strangle lions--in that abortion, the Havannah dog, so weak and frail, that even in a torrid climate Nature has clothed it with a thick fleece, which conceals it, and converts it into an enigma?
The animal, when transplanted, may become a monster.
The ants also may have had their revolutions, their moral and physical changes, in proportion, as the globe, everywhere becoming inhabitable, has favoured their migrations. Several species, in the beautiful American climates, have preserved the honey-making industry; our own are ignorant of it, and are compelled to have recourse to the grubs; thence arises an art and a progress,--the art of breeding, preserving, and pasturing cattle.
Some species may have advanced, others retrograded. And it is thus I should explain the kidnapping habits of the red ants. Probably they belong to expatriated and demoralized classes--fragments of decayed communities which have lost their arts,--and which could not live but for this barbarous and desperate method of slavery. They no longer possess the artistic and teaching class, without which all peoples perish. Reduced to a military career, they could not live two days if they did not take unto themselves _souls_. Therefore, that they may not perish, they carry off the little black souls, which tend them, it is true, but also govern them. And this not only in the city itself, but in its external relations,--deciding or adjourning their expeditions, and regulating their campaigns; while the red, far from regulating the affairs of peace, do not seem even to comprehend them.
Singular triumph of intelligence! Invincible power of genius!