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So that the masters in this country receive much less service from their slaves than they do in Switzerland. By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend to conjecture.
I traced a long file of ants burthened with booty, for about forty yards, to a very thick clump of heath, whence I saw the last individual of F. sanguinea emerge, carrying a pupa; but I was not able to find the desolated nest in the thick heath.
The Californian Indians give children tobacco, in order to receive instruction from the resulting visions. North American Indians held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy, and the dreams of men in this state to be inspired. The Darien Indians use the seeds of the Datura Sanguinea to induce visions.
So that the masters in this country receive much less service from their slaves than they do in Switzerland. By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend to conjecture.
Other species of Ants have pushed the exploitation of slaves to a point Man has never reached. But the Formica sanguinea are companions to their helpers rather than masters, and even show them great consideration. When the colony emigrates one may see the owners of the nest, who are of larger size than the Formica fusca, take these up in their jaws and carry them the entire way.
The beautiful little rose-colored Nymphaea sanguinea, which once adorned the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, was merely an occasional variety of costume. Her humble cousin, the yellow Nuphar, keeps commonly aloof, as becomes a poor relation, though created from the selfsame mud, a fact which Hawthorne has beautifully moralized.
Formica sanguinea, on the other hand, possesses much fewer slaves, and in the early part of the summer extremely few. The masters determine when and where a new nest shall be formed, and when they migrate, the masters carry the slaves. Both in Switzerland and England the slaves seem to have the exclusive care of the larvae, and the masters alone go on slave-making expeditions.
TRAVELLER'S JOY. A beautiful creeping shrub very useful to the farmers for making shackles for gates and hurdles, or withs for tying faggots and other articles. Whenever this plant is found in the hedges, &c. it is a certain indication of a ckalky under stratum in the soil. CORNUS sanguinea.
In one instance I found to my surprise an independent community of F. flava under a stone beneath a nest of the slave-making F. sanguinea; and when I had accidentally disturbed both nests, the little ants attacked their big neighbours with surprising courage.
"And what is that?" asked Septimius. "Sanguinea sanguinissima" said the doctor; "it has no vulgar name; but it produces a very beautiful flower, which I have never seen, though some seeds of it were sent me by a learned friend in Siberia.
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