her prime, on her and her brood. If we are to make a mimic community, we must capture a Queen. The worker ants lose their will to live without the proximity of a Queen—they become immobile and listless, like young ladies in a decline, and then give up the ghost.’
‘How shall we find a Queen? Must we break open the city? We shall do a great deal of damage …’
‘I will look about and try to find a fairly recently established nest, a young community that can be transferred more or less entire.’
He paced up and down, turning over leaves with a stick, following small convoys of ants to their cracks and crannies in roots and earth. Matty Crompton stood watchfully by. She was wearing a brown stuff dress, severe and unornamental. Her dark hair was plaited around her head. She was good at keeping still. William felt a prick of pleasure at the return of his hunting, scanning self, which had been unexercised inside the walls of the Hall. Under his gaze the whole wood-floor became alive with movement, a centipede, various beetles, a sanguine shiny red worm, rabbit pellets, a tiny breast feather, a grass smeared with the eggs of some moth or butterfly, violets opening, conical entrance holes with fine dust inside, a swaying twig, a shifting pebble. He took out his magnifying lens and looked at a patch of moss, pebbles and sand, and saw a turmoil of previously invisible energies, striving, striving, white myriad-legged runners, invisible semi-transparent arthropods, button-tightspiderlings. His senses, and his mind attached to them, were like a magnetic field, pulled here and there. Here was a nest of Jet-black Ants, Acanthomyops fuliginosus, who lived in small households inside the interconnected encampments of the Wood Ants. Here, on the edge of the coppice, was a trail of slave-making ants, Formica sanguinea. He had always wanted to study these in action. He said so to Matty Crompton, pointing out the difference between the Wood Ants, Formica rufa, with their muddy-brown heads and blackish-brown gasters, or hind parts, and the blood-red sanguinea.
‘They invade the nests of the Wood Ants, and steal their cocoons, which they rear with their own, so that they become sanguinea workers. Terrible battles are fought by raiders and defenders.’
‘They resemble human societies in that, as in many things.’
‘The British slave-makers appear to be less dependent on their slaves than the Swiss Formica rufescens observed by Huber, who remarks that the workers of this species do no other work than capturing slaves, without whose labour their tribe would certainly become extinct, as all the child-rearing, and the food-gathering, are done by slaves. Mr Darwin observes that when these British Blood-red Ants migrate, they
carry
their slaves to the new home—but the more ferocious Swiss masters are so dependent, they require to be carried helplessly in the jaws of their slaves.’
‘Maybe they are all perfectly content in their stations,’ observed Matty Crompton. Her tone was neutral, so extraordinarily neutral that it would have been impossible to detect whether she spoke with irony or with conventional complacency, even if William had been giving her his complete attention, which he was not. He had found a meagre roof of thatch which he was ready to excavate. He took the trowel from her hands and removed several layers of earth, bristling with angry ant-warriors, littered with grubs and cocoons. A kind of seething attack accompanied his next moves, as he cutinto the heart of the nest. Miss Crompton, on his instructions, gathered up the workers, grubs and cocoons in large clods of earth, interlayed with twigs and leaves.
‘They bite,’ she observed tersely, brushing her minute attackers from her wrists.
‘They do. They make a hole with their mandibles and inject formic acid through their gaster, which they curve round, very elegantly. Do you wish to retreat?’
‘No. I am a match for a few justifiably furious
‘How shall we find a Queen? Must we break open the city? We shall do a great deal of damage …’
‘I will look about and try to find a fairly recently established nest, a young community that can be transferred more or less entire.’
He paced up and down, turning over leaves with a stick, following small convoys of ants to their cracks and crannies in roots and earth. Matty Crompton stood watchfully by. She was wearing a brown stuff dress, severe and unornamental. Her dark hair was plaited around her head. She was good at keeping still. William felt a prick of pleasure at the return of his hunting, scanning self, which had been unexercised inside the walls of the Hall. Under his gaze the whole wood-floor became alive with movement, a centipede, various beetles, a sanguine shiny red worm, rabbit pellets, a tiny breast feather, a grass smeared with the eggs of some moth or butterfly, violets opening, conical entrance holes with fine dust inside, a swaying twig, a shifting pebble. He took out his magnifying lens and looked at a patch of moss, pebbles and sand, and saw a turmoil of previously invisible energies, striving, striving, white myriad-legged runners, invisible semi-transparent arthropods, button-tightspiderlings. His senses, and his mind attached to them, were like a magnetic field, pulled here and there. Here was a nest of Jet-black Ants, Acanthomyops fuliginosus, who lived in small households inside the interconnected encampments of the Wood Ants. Here, on the edge of the coppice, was a trail of slave-making ants, Formica sanguinea. He had always wanted to study these in action. He said so to Matty Crompton, pointing out the difference between the Wood Ants, Formica rufa, with their muddy-brown heads and blackish-brown gasters, or hind parts, and the blood-red sanguinea.
‘They invade the nests of the Wood Ants, and steal their cocoons, which they rear with their own, so that they become sanguinea workers. Terrible battles are fought by raiders and defenders.’
‘They resemble human societies in that, as in many things.’
‘The British slave-makers appear to be less dependent on their slaves than the Swiss Formica rufescens observed by Huber, who remarks that the workers of this species do no other work than capturing slaves, without whose labour their tribe would certainly become extinct, as all the child-rearing, and the food-gathering, are done by slaves. Mr Darwin observes that when these British Blood-red Ants migrate, they
carry
their slaves to the new home—but the more ferocious Swiss masters are so dependent, they require to be carried helplessly in the jaws of their slaves.’
‘Maybe they are all perfectly content in their stations,’ observed Matty Crompton. Her tone was neutral, so extraordinarily neutral that it would have been impossible to detect whether she spoke with irony or with conventional complacency, even if William had been giving her his complete attention, which he was not. He had found a meagre roof of thatch which he was ready to excavate. He took the trowel from her hands and removed several layers of earth, bristling with angry ant-warriors, littered with grubs and cocoons. A kind of seething attack accompanied his next moves, as he cutinto the heart of the nest. Miss Crompton, on his instructions, gathered up the workers, grubs and cocoons in large clods of earth, interlayed with twigs and leaves.
‘They bite,’ she observed tersely, brushing her minute attackers from her wrists.
‘They do. They make a hole with their mandibles and inject formic acid through their gaster, which they curve round, very elegantly. Do you wish to retreat?’
‘No. I am a match for a few justifiably furious
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