POWER OF RECOGNITION AMONG ANTS. 245 



The conditions of odor in her colony during her lifetime are 

 crudely and only approximately represented by the diagram, but 

 the representation conduces to an understanding of certain phe- 

 nomena observed by me in the C colony, which I have now 

 studied four years, in its natural nest, and in my artificial ones. 

 When queens, instead of flying away to found new colonies, 

 remain in the colony where they hatched and increase its popu- 

 lation by their progeny, there is opportunity for all the members 

 of that colony to receive a liberal education of the chemical sense. 

 Every ant acts on individual experience, and if its experience be 

 narrow it will quarrel with many, while acquaintance with a great 

 number of ant-odors will cause it to live peaceably with ants of 

 diverse lineage, provided the odors characterizing such lineage 

 and age environ it at its hatching. If some of the workers 

 were separated from their colony in their youth, and kept segre- 

 gated several years, the sequestered ants could amicably meet 

 younger ants from their old home nest only by an act of memory, 

 or a power of recognition spanning the interval of their separation 

 from their colony. Precisely this condition has been created by 

 me with ants of the C colony. 



The C colony is a great community of Stcnaunna fulvum that 

 lives under stones scattered at considerable intervals over an area 

 ninety yards in diameter, along a lane and pasture. I have 

 been unable to find any other colony of Stenammas in its vicin- 

 age. Many of its young queens appear to mate with their kin 

 and remain in the colony. I have found as many as fourteen 

 dealated queens in a single shovelful of its nest-earth. The 

 queens and workers from its extreme limits always affiliate 

 unhesitatingly on meeting within its domain. 



On August 22, 1,901, I took from under a central stone of this 

 colony queens, males and workers, and divided them into two 

 sections, each of which was kept segregated in a Fielde nest for 

 two years. No young was permitted to hatch in either section, 

 and when I united the two sections in August, 1903, they affili- 

 ated instantly, and also affiliated less perfectly with queens and 

 workers freshly brought from the wild nest. 1 I kept the ants of 



1 Detailed account of these meetings may be found in " Cause of Feud between 

 Ants of the Same Species," already referred to, p. 328. 



