LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 833
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Life Among
the Ants
Vance Randolph
Drawings by Peter Quinn
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1925,
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
1. Books About Ants 4
2. The Ant’s Body 5
3. Reproduction and Metamorphosis 12
4. The Harvesting Ants 20
5. The Mushroom Growers 25
6. The Honey Ants 30
7. The Legionary Ants 36
8. The Red Slave Makers 46
9. The Amazons and Their Slaves 51
10. Dairies and Guests 54
LIFE AMONG THE ANTS
CHAPTER I
BOOKS ABOUT ANTS
There are many references to ants in the works of the ancients (Aesop,
Plutarch, Horace, Ovid and Pliny), and these were quoted and elaborated
by the mediaeval authors, but modern scientific investigation may be
said to begin with the nineteenth century. Since then an enormous
amount of work has been done by European scientists, but their papers
are scattered through the files of obscure scientific journals in a
great variety of continental languages, and are usually inaccessible or
useless to the American student who wishes to make a serious (but not
_too_ serious) study of ant life and behavior.
The first general treatise in English was doubtless Sir John Lubbock’s
famous work entitled _Ants, Bees and Wasps_, first published in 1881.
This work was for many years a sort of standard textbook on the
subject, and is still well worth looking into.
Another book which may be of use is _Animal Intelligence_, by George
Romanes. The sixth edition, which appeared in 1895, devotes more than
one hundred pages to the habits of ants.
Eric Wasmann has written a great number of books and papers about ants,
one of the best of which has appeared in English as _The Psychology
of Ants and of Higher Animals_, published in 1905. All of Wasmann’s
works are valuable and well worth reading, but they are marred by his
constant references to philosophical and theological matters which are
of no great interest to the general reader. Father Wasmann feels called
upon to demonstrate that ants, as regards their psychical powers,
are much nearer to man than are the anthropoid apes, and is forever
interrupting himself to defend his vitalistic biology and condemn the
theory of organic evolution.
By all odds the best work available on the subject is the large volume
called _Ants_, written by Professor William Morton Wheeler of Harvard
University, and published in 1910. This book is, in fact, not merely
the best but the only book required by the average student. There is,
of course, a great deal of material which is uncomprehensible to one
who has no particular technical background, but the whole thing is so
admirably arranged that the student has only to glance through the
table of contents to locate matter suited to his taste and training. I
have made a very free use of _Ants_ in the preparation of this booklet,
some sections of which are little more than epitomes or abstracts of
Wheeler’s chapters.