Prof. 0. Heer on the House Ant of Madeira, 217 



In order to look more into our ants' manner of proceeding in 

 their work, I placed a small wooden vessel in a tumbler of water, 

 and stretched a thread from the vessel through the air to a ledge 

 on the wall two feet off, and from this ledge a second thread to 

 the ground. This thread was perpendicular, the first horizontal. 

 The ants soon passed along the horizontal thread to the vessel in 

 the water, on which I had laid a small piece of meat. No sooner 

 was this discovered, than the ants set to work at it. In a short 

 time, whole masses poured in. At first they were only labourers, 

 but presently a few soldiers made their appearance in the train 

 of the former. The soldiers cut up the meat into little pieces, 

 drawing up their abdomen into an almost vertical direction, like 

 that of their head. (Compare fig. iii. 3). They presented thus a 

 most curious appearance, when one looked down from above, and 

 saw only the middle part of the body and the crown of the head. 

 The meat was cut up into quite small fragments with their great 

 hatchet- shaped pincers, being held fast at the same time by the 

 two fore-legs. The labourers took these fragments between 

 their pincers, and carried them away. Whole trains passed 

 along the horizontal thread, and each of those that formed them 

 had a fragment in its mouth. But the labourers alone were 

 engaged in this act of transport : I never saw a soldier carrying 

 away anything. At times, indeed, one or another went back 

 over the thread, but always without taking anything with him. 

 The ants soon discovered the perpendicular thread, and found 

 out that they could get easier to the floor of the room by it than by 

 the wall ; and thenceforward the whole train always passed along 

 this perpendicular thread down to the ground, and from thence 

 to a corner of the room, where they disappeared through a little 

 hole in the wall. Thus, from the vessel in the water they first 

 passed along the horizontal thread to the wall, where they had 

 to run along a ledge, and then arrived at the perpendicular 

 thread, which reached down to the ground. The thread was 

 always thickly crowded with ants, some passing downwards laden 

 with fragments, the others empty, mounting upwards; and the 

 up and down passers always arranged in files, so as not to disturb 

 each other mutually in their way. More than once I placed ants, 

 which I had fetched out of another room, in the vessel in the 

 water. These also soon found, indeed, the thread leading to the 

 wall ; but there they dispersed themselves on all sides ; whilst 

 the others, without stopping, always ran to the perpendicular 

 thread. This gave me a ready means of ascertaining whether 

 ants from difi*erent nests came into my room or not. A closer in- 

 vestigation proved the first to be the case. It turned out that all 

 the ants which resorted to the vessel in the water to fetch food, 

 belonged to one colony, as well as all which appeared on the 



