244 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[Nov. 1, 1S70. 



prevail. Ant after ant stroked it with their 

 antennae, and touched those of their companions. 

 None attempted to remove it, till at length one 

 arrived who seized and made off with it, and, after 

 having for some time been very undecided where to 

 put it, chance at last led it to the platform, from 

 which, unhesitatingly, it dropped it into the water. 

 I replaced it two-and-twenty times, and the same 

 scene always recurred. They seemed at last to 

 think that this unusual state of things arose from 

 their not taking sufficient pains to put it in a 

 remote enough place, and they used the utmost 

 care, dropping it into the water, and taking it out 

 again, only to submerge it in a fresh place, before 

 they were satisfied. They are rather addicted to 

 drowning companions, who, though evidently 

 unwell, are far from dead. After having done 

 anything of this kind, they go through an elaborate 

 cleansing process, aud I have seen an ant in a 

 secluded burrow brushing and combing itself all 

 over, aud especially its antennas. A live ant once 

 had a little shrivelled and dead companion attached 

 to it by the antennae ; as the former was running 

 about in great distress, I with some difficulty 

 released him. 



HaviDg introduced a red ant into the formicary, 

 it ran about unmolested for some time, till it went 

 down a hole where a brown ant was at work. The 

 latter, as soon as he saw it, seized it round the 

 waist, and, rushing with it up to the surface, they 

 rolled over and over together with the greatest 

 fury ; the brown ant then let go and resumed its 

 work, the other walking quietly away. Some time 

 after I put in a second red ant, who, being set upon 

 by three of my colony, was bitten and pulled at 

 with great violence, but the result of it was not 

 very clear, as, on separating them, they ran off 

 uninjured. The red ants are always much 

 frightened when they see the quarters they have 

 got into, and attempt no defence. Among them- 

 selves the brown ants are very friendly, and I have 

 never seen a quarrel of any kind. They cannot bear 

 any intrusion, and would fight to the last in the 

 protection of their dwellings. I once inserted down 

 a hole the little steel spatula with which I helped 

 ants out of the water, and it was entertaining to 

 see the first ant that came draw itself back, and 

 make repeated darts at it, vainly trying to bite the 

 metal. When they attempt to nip you, they draw 

 up their legs, double up their body, and seem to 

 throw forth all their strength, and it requires a 

 sharp knock to make them loose their hold. When 

 in cleansing the glass a little earth had fallen down 

 a burrow, they immediately blocked this opening com- 

 pletely up, and let it remain so for two or three days 

 before they ventured to reopen it. They evidently 

 expected some further attack from the enemy above. 



Since the end of August they many times have 

 seized very savagely some of their ants, fresh from 



the cocoon, and have thrown them into the tank, 

 and drowned them. Probably they were sickly 

 and weak, from being hatched too late in the season. 

 In all my experience I never found that they 

 objected to additions from the old nest, though I 

 have added some at least six weeks after the 

 foundation of my colony. Yet if I placed in the 

 formicary, as I did several times, a specimen of the 

 same species, but from quite a different nest, it 

 created very great excitement, and the intruder 

 was shortly killed and thrown into the water. I 

 once thus saw two ants floating on the surface fast 

 locked to each other ; one was dead, and the other 

 nearly so, having lost a leg and part of an antenna. 

 One combatant, in trying to drown the other, had 

 fallen in himself. 



If ants are determined to escape, as about a 

 dozen fresh ones I put in were, scarcely anything 

 will keep them in. I found that several got out 

 where the tin trough joined the platform, by getting 

 into the crack, going beneath the tin, and coming 

 up on the other side. I therefore covered the 

 crevice with paper; but they were not to be 

 baffled, and, after about six hours' hard labour, one 

 of them successfully bit a hole in the paper large 

 enough to pass through. Even if the water got 

 dusty, these adventurous ones would take ad- 

 vantage of it, and manage to cross without sinking, 

 and, I think, in the end, most of them got away. 

 Once a small blade of grass fell across the water 

 without my perceiving it, but it was directly dis- 

 covered by the ants, and my attention was drawn 

 to it by seeing them, one after the other, crossing 

 this accidental bridge to the opposite bank. An 

 ant seems sometimes seized with a suicidal 

 tendency, and I have twice seen one, time after 

 time, throw itself into the water, and, although 

 constantly picked out and removed to the grass in 

 the centre, with slow and feeble steps it always 

 went direct to the tank again. Whatever the 

 cause was, the craving for water was intense. 



The curiosity they exhibit about any fresh 

 object is great. One day when they were very 

 quiet, and few above-ground, I took the oppor- 

 tunity to repaper the platform, to pump the water 

 from the trough, and to clean it, out. Though it 

 was dry about half an hour, only one ant came 

 down to it, yet when all was completed, and the 

 moat refilled, in about ten minutes there was a 

 constant stream of ants descending to look at the 

 alterations which they had so rapidly detected. 

 Whenever one ant meets another, they cross 

 antenna?, and pass on, and I have never seen two 

 ants actually meet without giving this salutation. 

 I noticed one ant which had been deprived of its 

 antenna? ; it was almost unable to walk, and con- 

 stantly fell into the water, and evidently had no 

 perception of where it was going. Some of the ants 

 are far larger and stronger than others. 



