400 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



less than twelve friends. As in the previous case, she rah on ahead, 

 and they followed very slowly and by no means directly, taking, in 

 fact, nearly half an hour to reach the fly. The first ant, after vainly 

 laboring for about a quarter of an hour to move the fly, started off 

 again to the nest. Meeting one of her friends on the way, she talked 

 with her a little, then continued toward the nest, but, after going about 

 a foot, changed her mind, and returned with her friend to the fly. 

 After some minutes, during which two or three other ants came up, 

 one of them detached a leg, which she carried off to the nest, coming 

 out again almost immediately with six friends, one of whom, curiously 

 enough, seemed to lead the way, tracing it, I presume, by scent. I 

 then removed the pin, and they carried off the fly in triumph. Again, 

 on June 15th, another ant belonging to the same nest had found a 

 dead spider, about the same distance from the nest. I pinned down 

 the spider as before. The ant did all in her power to move it ; but 

 after trying for twelve minutes, she went off to the nest. For a quar- 

 ter of an hour no other ant had come out, but in some seconds she 

 came out again with ten companions. As in the preceding case, they 

 followed very leisurely. She ran on ahead, and worked at the spider 

 for ten minutes ; when, as none of her friends had arrived to her as- 

 sistance, though they were wandering about evidently in search of 

 something, she started back home again. In three quarters of a minute 

 after entering the nest she reappeared, this time with fifteen friends, 

 who came on somewhat more rapidly than the preceding batch, though 

 still but slowly. By degrees, however, they all came up, and after 

 most persevering efforts carried off the spider piecemeal. On July 

 7th I tried the same experiment with a soldier of Pheidole megace- 

 phala. She pulled at the fly for no less than fifty minutes, after which 

 she went to the nest and brought five friends exactly as the Atta had 

 done." 



Can anything be more remarkable than the extraordinary difference 

 in the demeanor of the ants taught by personal experience, and of the 

 ants trusting to the report of another ? Obviously, the latter had a 

 very languid belief in the statements of their friends, just enough to 

 make them enter on the enterprise, but not enough to make them pros- 

 ecute it even so far as to hasten their pkce in order to keep up with 

 their eager friend. Clearly, the ants are not very good judges of 

 character. Their predisposition to distrust sanguine statements, like 

 the predisposition of timid conservatives in general, is so deep, that at 

 the first obstacle they fall away, perhaps questioning the use of task- 

 ing themselves for news that sounds so improbable as that of a treasure- 

 trove. Sir John Lubbock even reports one case in which a slave-ant, 

 of the Polyergus species, twice returned to her nest in search of co- 

 operation in vain. Nothing she could say would induce her fellow- 

 slaves to enter on a new bit of work, without better evidence of its 

 remunerative character than a wandering fellow-servant's report gave 



