272 THB CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



The proposition set up by the modern school of animal psychology, 

 that learning through individual experience is a criterion of intelligence, 

 must therefore be condemned as untenable. It is also incorrect to make 

 "learning through individual sensory experience" a criterion of psychical 

 power. 



A further discussion of evidence offered on the psychical life of ants 

 occupies many pages. The fact is brought out that many of the most 

 ordinary of their activities bear directly on the subject, while on the other 

 hand numerous apparently intelligent proceedings may be referred to 

 simpler factors. Dr. Wasmann concludes that ants are neither intelligent 

 miniature men nor mere reflex machines, but are organisms possessed of 

 the power of sensory sensations and voluntary action, and that their 

 inherited instincts may be modified in many ways through sensory percep- 

 tion and circumstances of sensation, as well as through the influence of 

 previously gained experience. An application of the Darwinian factors, 

 he says, fails to explain the development of the relations between ants 

 and termites and their respective guests. The fact that ants, in their 

 symbiosis, often raise their worst enemies, is as irreconcilable with the 

 Darwinian form of the theory of descent as with the acceptance of an 

 animal intelligence. 



A supplement follows, describing six new species of myrmecophilous 

 Proctotrupidpe. At the request of many readers, the author has added a 

 list of his published works on myrmecophilism and termitophilism, which 

 counts up ninety-four titles, the present contribution being the ninety-fifth. 



No student of ant-life or of comparative psychology should fail to 

 read this memoir. It is to be hoped that it will serve to still further 

 stimulate the study of the mental side of ants, and in this line of investi- 

 gation it sets a model of careful observation and cautious conclusions. 



H. F. WiCKHAM. 



Mailed September 8th, iSgg. 



