48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



more numerous, and had carried off about two-thirds of the honey. 

 At V A. M. the next moi'ning the honey was all gone ; two or three 

 ants were still wandering about, but no notice had been taken of the 

 prisoner, whom I then let out. In this case I allowed the honey to 

 be finished, because I thought it might perhaps be alleged that the 

 excitement produced by such a treasure distracted their attention ; 

 or even, on the principle of doing the greatest good to the greatest 

 number, that they were intelligently wuse in securing a treasure of 

 food before they rescued their comrade, who, though in confinement, 

 was neither in pain nor danger. So far as the above ants, however, 

 are concerned, this cannot be urged. I may add that I repeated the 

 same experiment several times, in some cases with another species, 

 Myrmica ruginodis, and always with the same results. 



Ants have been much praised on account of their affection for 

 their friends. In this respect, however, they seem to vary greatly. 

 At any rate, any one who has watched them much must have met 

 with very contradictory facts. I have often put ants which were 

 {Smeared with a sticky substance on the boards attached to my nests, 

 and very rarely indeed did their companions take any notice of or 

 seek to disentangle them. 



I then tried the following experiment : A number of the small 

 yellow ants {L. fiavus) were out feeding on some honey. I took five 

 of them, and also five others of the same species, but from a different 

 nest, chloroformed them, and put them close to the honey, and on 

 the path which the ants took in going to and from the nest, so that 

 these could not but see them. The grass on which the honey was 

 placed was surrounded by a moat of water. This, then, gave me 

 an opportunity of testing both how far they would be disposed to as- 

 sist a helpless fellow-creature, and what difference they would make 

 between their nest-companions and strangers from a different com- 

 munity. The chloroformed ants were put down at ten in the 

 morning. For more than an hour, though many ants came up and 

 touched them with their antennae, none of them did more. At 

 length one of the strangers w^as picked up, cai-ried to the edge of the 

 glass, and quietly thrown, or rather dropped, into the water. Shortly 

 afterward a friend was taken up and treated the same way. By 

 degrees they were all picked up and thrown into the water. One of 

 the strangers was, indeed, taken into the nest, but in about half an 

 hour she was brought out again and thrown into the water like 

 the rest. I repeated this experiment with fifty ants, half friends 

 and half strangers. In each case twenty out of the twenty-five 

 ants were thrown into the water as described. A few were left 

 lying where they were placed, and these also, if we had watched 

 longer, would no doubt have been also treated in the same way. 

 One out of the twenty-five friends, and three out of the twenty-five 

 strangers, were carried into the nest, but they were all brought out 



