------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV Ant partnerships—How some ants feed—Persuasive methods—An _imperium in imperio_—Amusement by instinct—Begging the question—Nest within nest—Ant errors v. human perfection—Distorted arguments—How partnerships begin—Housing an enemy—Ant ogres. THE relation of slave and slave-master—to use the received terminology—is not the only one of a social and friendly nature in which ants of different species stand towards one another; for as will have been gathered in the previous chapter, slavery amongst ants is a quite friendly institution, conducted, in fact, upon the “liberty-equality-fraternity” principle. Some species of ants, however, inhabit the nests of other species, or build their own amidst theirs in such a way as almost to make them one, and thus they live as perpetual guests, not only without paying for such accommodation by rendering their hosts any services, but often forcing these latter to be of service to them in other ways also. Thus, a small species of Texan ant whose first or Christian name is _Leptothorax_, but whose surname has not yet been fixed upon, lives on these terms in the nests of a larger one, the celebrated _Myrmica brevinodis_. Whether Professor Wheeler was the discoverer of the little ant I am not quite sure, but he was the first, I think, to observe its relations with the big one and those of the big one with it, and his account of them is excessively interesting. “A small dish,” he says, “containing a syrup of sugar and water was placed near the nest (an artificial one under close observation). This was soon found by two of the _Myrmica_ workers, which at once gorged themselves with the liquid and returned into the nest.”[56] Soon afterwards a _Leptothorax_ worker entered it also, and having run or tracked down one of the two honey-gorged creatures, forthwith got up on to its back, and, seated there, began to lick its head, an attention which it supplemented with a soft, persuasive titillation with its antennæ, whilst at the same time communicating a motion to its abdomen, which Professor Wheeler is so convinced must have been accompanied with certain sounds—known to the learned as stridulations—that he does not hesitate to affirm that it was thrown “into stridulatory oscillation.” Nor was the _Myrmica_ deaf to such an appeal. It slackened its pace, hesitated, then paused, and as though unable longer to resist the influence, folded its antennæ and appeared to give itself up to the full pleasure of the thing. The tempter, now, still making soft play with the antennæ, lowered its own head, and began to lick the _Myrmica_ first on one cheek and then the other, including also the mandibles and parts adjoining. Thus fostered, a dewy moisture, drawn evidently from the reservoir of lately swallowed nectar, began to glisten on the lips of the large