The Ant State is not restricted to the single ant-hill; it has its territory, its domain, its colonies. Like our colonising powers, it has its ports of call, its revictualling stations. The territory is a single meadow, a few trees, or a hedge. The domain of exploitation consists of the ground and the subsoil, together with the aphis-bearing trees whence the ants take the aphides they keep under domestication. Their colonies are detached nests more or less distant from the metropolis and more or less numerous (there may be as many as two hundred), communicating with the primary nest by open roads or by underground passages. The depots are small nests or dug-outs for the use of ants on long expeditions, ants that require a rest or those that are overtaken by bad weather. Naturally these communities tend to grow, and they thus come into conflict one with another. "Territorial disputes, along the frontier between two great ant communities, are the usual cause of embittered struggles. The aphis-bearing shrubs are the most fiercely contested. But, in the case of certain species, subterranean domains (the roots of plants) are likewise the region of savage warfare." Some species live solely by war and plunder. Polyergus rufescens (Huber's "amazon") disdains work, and has indeed lost the power. The members of this species live as slave-owners, served, tended, fed, by troops of slaves, the latter being recruited (in the larval or pupal stage) by slave raids upon neighbouring ant-hills. Thus war is endemic, and every citizen of these democracies, every worker ant, has to take part in the fighting. In certain species (Pheidole pallidula), the military caste is distinct from the working caste. The soldier takes no part in domestic work, but idles away the days in barracks, with nothing to do save at the times when life has to be staked for the defence of the community.[76] There are no leaders, or at any rate no permanent leaders. We see neither kings nor generals. The expeditionary armies of Polyergus rufescens, which may vary from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand ants, act in obedience to streams of influence which appear to emanate from small and scattered groups, sometimes in the van and sometimes in the rear. When the army is on the march, the entire column will suddenly halt, remaining indecisive and motionless, as if paralysed. Of a sudden, the initiative will be taken by some small group of ants whose members rush about among the others, striking these on the head; then the temporary leaders start off, and the whole army is in motion once more.