ANT COMMUNITIES 



Here we have a series of actions by which two in- 

 vertebrates clearly communicated their emotions. The 

 spider passed rapidly through stages reaching from 

 quiet enjoyment of food to intense passion of the chase 

 and ferocity in capture, and to the repose of success 

 when the prey was secured. Thence the course swung 

 to rearoused energies under apprehension of loss, and 

 to fear of some unknown superior foe when rapped by 

 the observer, and anxiety to defend herself therefrom, 

 as shown by shaking her web. 



The bee, too, had swift transitions: from her hum of 

 contented industry to the subdued note of resignation 

 to her fate when shut up in her silken sarcophagus; 

 thence to vivid reawakening to life, with her sense of 

 injury, her blind wrath and revenge, the wish to strike 

 at something; and so back to where the cycle began: 

 at the song of peaceful labor. In all these stages these 

 children of the wild betraved their current moods to 



v 



man. "There was speech in their dumbness, language 

 in their very gestures. " No careful observer of their 



*. C_7 



natural actions and of the field-life of their kind can 

 doubt that, within limits indefinite and difficult to define, 

 like actions among the more highly organized insects 

 are understood bv one another. 



V 



Still further, it does not seem probable that the ability 

 thus to make known their emotions is limited to such 

 modes of expression as human intelligence can interpret. 

 Beyond the sphere of ideas and sentiments whose sym- 

 bols men can discern, there doubtless are others peculiar 

 to themselves, and therewith due methods of inter- 

 communication. 



In the cases above cited the actions may be said to 

 have been simply the unconscious physical expression 



128 



