INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS. 497 



made during the out-going journey, and that this power of registra- 

 tion has reference only to lateral movements ; it has no reference to 

 variations in the velocity of advance along the line in which the ani- 

 mal is progressing 



Powers of Communication. Huber, Forel, Kirby and Spence, 

 Dujardin, Burmeister, Franklin, and other observers have all expressed 

 themselves as holding the opinion that ants are able to communicate 

 information to one another by some system of language or signs. The 

 facts, however, on which the opinion of these earlier observers rested, 

 have not been stated with that degree of caution and detail which the 

 acceptance of their opinion would require. But the more recent ob- 

 servations of Bates, Belt, Moggridge, Hague, Lincecum, McCook, and 

 Lubbock, leave no doubt upon the subject. Two or three instances 

 will be enough to select in order to prove the general fact. Hague, 

 the geologist, kept upon his mantel-shelf a vase of flowers, and he no- 

 ticed a file of small red ants on the wall above the shelf passing up- 

 ward and downward between the latter and a small hole near the 

 ceiling. The ants, whose object was to get at the flowers, were at first 

 few ; but they increased in number during several successive days, un- 

 til an unbroken succession was formed all the way down the wall. To 

 get rid of the ants, Hague then tried frequently brushing them off the 

 wall upon the floor in great numbers ; but the only result was that an- 

 other train was formed to the flowers ascending from the floor. He, 

 therefore, took more severe measures, and struck the end of his finger 

 lightly upon the descending train near the flower-vase, so killing some 

 and disabling: others. " The effect of this was immediate and unex- 

 pected. As soon as those ants which were approaching arrived near to 

 where their fellows lay dead and suffering, they turned and fled with 

 all possible haste, and in half an hour the wall above the mantel-shelf 

 was cleared of ants." The stream from below continued to ascend for 

 an hour or two, the ants advancing " hesitatingly just to the edge of 

 the shelf, when, extending their antennae and stretching their necks, 

 they seemed to peep cautiously over the edge until beholding their 

 suffering companions, when they too turned, expressing by their be- 

 havior great excitement and terror." Both columns of ants thus en- 

 tirely disappeared. For several days there was a complete absence of 

 ants : then a few began to reappear ; " but, instead of visiting the vase 

 which had been the scene of the disaster, they avoided it altogether," 

 and made for another vessel containing flowers at the other end of the 

 shelf. Hague here repeated the same experiment, with exactly the 

 same result. After this for several days no ants reappeared ; and 

 during the next three months it was only when fresh and particu- 

 larly fragrant flowers were put into the vases that a few of the more 

 daring ants ventured to straggle toward them. Hague concludes his 

 letter to Mr. Darwin, in which these observations are contained, by 



saying : 



vor,. XIX. 32 



