individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the
use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been
selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as
an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its
kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall
back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even
upon the enemies themselves. And if an ant has not refused to
feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be
treated by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend. All this is
confirmed by most accurate observation and decisive
experiments.(7)

In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies
more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the
Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men,
competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of
nests, does not exist. However terrible the wars between different
species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time,
mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a
habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are
the rule. The ants and termites have renounced the "Hobbesian
war," and they are the better for it. Their wonderful nests,
their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their
paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their spacious
halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting"
of grain;(8) their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and
larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides
whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the
ants"; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and, superior
intelligence--all these are the natural outcome of the mutual