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



table on which the vessel stood ; and that, on the other hand, 

 those which were destroying the fruit on the window-seat, must 

 belong to another nest. From this, however, I could not quite 

 draw the conclusion, that one ant-colony, when it has fallen in 

 with a prize, excludes another from a share in it. At least I 

 have never seen them fighting with each other, which in such a 

 case would scarcely not have happened. Probably all provision 

 that may be discovered is considered common property, and each 

 party keeps as much of it as it can carry away. But if once a 

 nest has taken entire possession of a thing, then probably the 

 others keep aloof, and leave it altogether to the first. Here, too, 

 it is to be considered, that ants clearly have a sort of power of 

 communication ; for let only a single labourer discover a supply, 

 and without delay there appears a whole troop of ants to work at 

 it. We cannot otherwise explain this circumstance to ourselves, 

 than that the exploring labourer had gone back into the nest, 

 and thence procured help. It would be in consequence of this 

 circumstance that, as a rule, ants of the same nest are always 

 collected for a common work. 



That ants have memory, Huber has already pointed out ; and 

 the following observation would also confirm it: — One of my 

 fellow-lodgers had arranged in his room a similar apparatus to 

 that which I have described above ; only in this, from the middle 

 of the horizontal thread, which was several feet long, a second 

 shorter thread was carried to the nearest wall. The ants soon 

 chose this last road; thus going from the vessel in the water 

 to the middle of the horizontal thread, and thence to the wall 

 over the thread at right angles to it. After some time this last 

 was removed. At first all the ants stopped suddenly, exactly at 

 the place where, before, the thread that led sideways was fastened, 

 and ran no farther along the horizontal thread. They had there- 

 fore observed closely for themselves the place whence the side- 

 thread had branched off, though it had no sort of mark. At last, 

 after having run restlessly backwards and forwards for some time, 

 they tried to proceed further on the thread, and thus arrived at 

 the wall, where they collected together in a cluster, having thence 

 to seek the way for themselves. Perhaps too the fact here 

 communicated may be explained by the faculty of tracking in 

 ants. The dog tracks out, as is well known, the way which 

 his master has taken to a great distance ; and so the ant, perhaps, 

 possesses alike fine " scent, '^ which enables it to find again with 

 certainty the way along which it has once passed. As above 

 noticed, the larger pieces of meat placed in the vessel were torn 

 up on the spot into scraps of pretty equal size, such as a single 

 labourer could well transport ; in like manner were grasshoppers 

 and larger insects also dealt with ; but dead flies, which were 



