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Updated: August 21, 2024
I supposed then that the insensibility had been caused by the soldiers holding the necks of the white ants too tightly with their mandibles, as that is the way they seize them; but even the pupae which I took from the soldier-ants, though placed in a favorable temperature, never became developed.
Walking down to the forest, after telling these poor people, for the first time in their lives, that the Son of God had so loved them as to come down from heaven to save them, I observed many regiments of black soldier-ants returning from their marauding expeditions.
The myriads of soldier-ants crossing the road in solid phalanx or climbing the trees, the winged jewels of the air flitting silently here and there, the picturesque natives and their deferential salaams all these only serve to wean one's thoughts from the oppressive heat for a moment.
Had we not found him, he would certainly have died miserably in the course of another day or two, and very likely have fallen a victim to an army of soldier-ants. "We met with several other adventures during the day, and managed somehow or other to lose our way, or we should have reached home before nightfall. Contrary to our intentions, we had therefore to camp out for another night.
When the ant-eater opens one of these galleries, the workers immediately run off and hide themselves, while the soldier-ants rush forth to attack the intruder, and, of course, immediately fall victims; thus preserving, by the sacrifice of their own lives, the rest of the community.
Associated insects have thus acquired many remarkable structures, which are of little or no service to the individual, such as the pollen-collecting apparatus, or the sting of the worker-bee, or the great jaws of soldier-ants. With the higher social animals, I am not aware that any structure has been modified solely for the good of the community, though some are of secondary service to it.
It was a chaos like that of upturned ant-heaps, but with each ant trying to rescue its eggs and sticks in a persistent, orderly way, directed by some controlling or communal intelligence, only instead of eggs and sticks these soldier-ants of ours, in the whole world behind our front-lines, were trying to rescue heavy guns, motor-lorries, tanks, ambulances, hospital stores, ordnance stores, steam-rollers, agricultural implements, transport wagons, railway engines, Y.M.C.A. tents, gun-horse and mule columns, while rear-guard actions were being fought within gunfire of them and walking wounded were hobbling back along the roads in this uproar of traffic, and word came that a further retreat was happening and that the enemy had broken through again...
The fluid in each case is, I suppose, designed to cause insensibility, and likewise act as an antiseptic, the death of the victims being without pain. Without these black soldier-ants the country would be overrun by the white ants; they are so extremely prolific, and nothing can exceed the energy with which they work.
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