But in many cases the community does not consist of Ants only. They have domestic animals, and indeed it is not going too far to say that they have domesticated more animals than we have. Of these the most important are Aphides. Some species keep Aphides on trees and bushes, others collect root-feeding Aphides into their nests. They serve as cows to the Ants, which feed on the honey-dew secreted by the Aphides. Not only, moreover, do the Ants protect the Aphides themselves, but collect their eggs in autumn, and tend them carefully through the winter, ready for the next spring. Many other insects are also domesticated by Ants, and some of them, from living constantly underground, have completely lost their eyes and become quite blind. But I must not let myself be carried away by this fascinating subject, which I have treated more at length in another work.[14] I will only say that though their intelligence is no doubt limited, still I do not think that any one who has studied the life-history of Ants can draw any fundamental line of separation between instinct and reason. When we see a community of Ants working together in perfect harmony, it is impossible not to ask ourselves how far they are mere exquisite automatons; how far they are conscious beings? When we watch an ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the young, tending their domestic animals--each one fulfilling its duties industriously, and without confusion,--it is difficult altogether to deny to them the gift of reason; and all our recent observations tend to confirm the opinion that their mental powers differ from those of men, not so much in kind as in degree. FOOTNOTES: [11] _The Horse._ [12] Lubbock, _Fifty Years of Science_. [13] _The Open Air._ [14] _Ants, Bees, and Wasps._ CHAPTER III ON ANIMAL LIFE--_continued_ An organic being is a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and numerous as the stars of heaven. DARWIN. CHAPTER III ON ANIMAL LIFE--_continued._