Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants, and the bees are so well known to the general reader, especially through the works of Romanes, L. Buchner, and Sir John Lubbock, that I may limit my remarks to a very few hints.(6) If we take an ants’ nest, we not only see that every description of work-rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of aphides, and so on—­is performed according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid; we must also recognize, with Forel, that the chief, the fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the fact and the obligation for every ant of sharing its food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of the community which may apply for it.  Two ants belonging to two different species or to two hostile nests, when they occasionally meet together, will avoid each other.  But two ants belonging to the same nest or to the same colony of nests will approach each other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and “if one of them is hungry or thirsty, and especially if the other has its crop full... it immediately asks for food.”  The individual thus requested never refuses; it sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position, and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid which is licked up by the hungry ant.  Regurgitating food for other ants is so prominent a feature in the life of ants (at liberty), and it so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding larvae, that Forel considers the digestive tube of the ants as consisting of two different parts, one of which, the posterior, is for the special use of the individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the use of the community.  If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse.  If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves.  And if an ant has not refused to feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be treated by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend.  All this is confirmed by most accurate observation and decisive experiments.(7)

In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of nests, does not exist.  However terrible the wars between different species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time, mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are the rule.  The ants and termites have renounced the “Hobbesian war,” and they are the better for it.  Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries;