were flushed with success, and, in the second, demoralised through defeat. The same effects would follow the same causes in all but the most splendid human armies. The raids made by the first-mentioned species, _Polyergus rufescens_, or, as Huber calls them, the Amazon ants, are of an even more determined description, for none are braver, or perhaps so brave. If one of these should find herself alone and in the midst of enemies, she makes no effort to escape, as many, though not all, other species would, but fights on to the end, making constant agile leaps to this side or that, at every one of which she transfixes an enemy, and dies at last biting hard. To fight, indeed, is the whole end, aim, and business of life for an Amazon, and we have already seen how they do no work, and are washed, fed, and carried by their servants. It is not quite true, however, that they cannot feed themselves, as Pierre Huber thought, and had good reason to think, for a well-known living observer—Herr Wasmann—has discovered that their mandibles are so constructed as to enable them “to absorb nourishment from eggs or pupæ.” Possibly the mandibles are hollow, and communicate thus with the mouth, as is the case with some other insects, but I have not Wasmann’s account at hand, and his exponent says only this. Wasmann tells us also that these Amazons will “absorb nourishment,” however they do it, even from the eggs of their own species. They cannot, however, feed on liquid food, and as they had no other when shut up without servants, that is why they died, or would have died, had these not been brought them in time. So too, though their slaves wash and brush them, yet they are always brushing themselves and attending generally to their own toilette, and this they do even amidst “All the currents of a heady fight,” so that Wasmann has compared them to the Spartans combing their long hair before the battle of Thermopylæ, though we are not told that they combed it after the fight had begun.