Explore "Consider Her Ways" by Frederick Philip Grove on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I must, now, very briefly, unfold certain speculations of mine; for I wish to wind up what is known and inferred about slave-making ants before I proceed to the strangest of all our adventures, namely, our life among men of a city.
By the comparison of Pogonomyrmex Occidentalis, Formica Rubicunda, and the various tribes of Polyergus I seemed to have arrived at a very definite though incomplete line of development. Perhaps I should, instead of Pogonomyrmex Occidentalis, have mentioned Dorymyrmex Pyramicus, for the latter species is really the one in which the slave-making instincts take their inception. These little ants live, as I have mentioned, in burrows placed within the cleared disks or even on the flank of the mound erected by Pogonomyrmex; and they provide their sustenance by relieving single harvesters of the booty they are bringing in. If we consider this as the beginning of slavery, its origin is clearly to be looked for in piracy.