28 Mr. Rennie on the Cleanliness of Animals. 



thick hairs, which is employed in the same way. Any person 

 who will take the trouble may readily verify these observations 

 by confining a spider in a wine-glass, placed in a saucer filled 

 with water, from which it cannot escape, so long as there is no 

 current of air to carry off a silken line for a bridge. 



Those who have paid attention to ants, may have remarked 

 that a pair of them may be often seen touching one another with 

 their antenna?, and even passing their tongues over part of each 

 other's bodies, in the same way as they are seen to do with their 

 eggs, larvae, and pupae, erroneously imagined by the ancients 

 to be hoarded grain. The necessity which they are under of 

 moving these to various parts of the colony, in consequence of 

 variations in the weather, must often expose them (polished 

 though they be) to soiling; but the careful nurses instantly 

 remove every thing of this sort with their mandibles, or tongue 

 movements which have been misinterpreted, as licking the 

 pupae into shape ; as the bear is no less erroneously asserted 

 to do by her cubs. In all such cases, cleanliness seems to be 

 the chief, if not the sole, motive ; as those mutual caresses of 

 the working ants are, I think, for the same purpose. These, 

 indeed, remind me strongly of the common practice of horses 

 and cows of cleaning each other's necks and heads, which the 

 individual cannot itself reach with its tongue ; and, in the same 

 way, caged birds will sometimes do the friendly office to a fel- 

 low-prisoner, of pecking off anything extraneous adhering to 

 the head or the bill, where preening is impossible, and the foot 

 is seldom well adapted to the purpose. 



Such are a few of the illustrations which have suggested 

 themselves to me upon this subject : should they be found 

 interesting, I may probably add a few more at a future op- 

 portunity. 



Lee, Kent, 1st July, 1830. 



