WHEELER ON ANTS 77 



and the lower invertebrates in general. In addition to these reflexes, however, 

 ants manifest more comphcated trains of behavior, the so-called instincts; and both 

 these and the reflexes may be affected with a certain modifiability or plasticity 

 which, in its highest manifestations, has been called intelligence." (p. 518.) 



" In addition to instinct, two types of plastic behavior may be distinguished 

 in ants: first, random behavior, like that observed by Jennings, Holmes, Yerkes 

 and others in so many of the lower invertebrates and by Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike, 

 Hobhouse and others in the higher animals. Random, or " trial and error " 

 movements, occur, so to speak, in the very bosom of the instincts, as, for example, 

 when an ant goes out to forage for food that has not as yet been located." 



"A second type of behavior is that in which the organism when confronted with 

 a new situation does not proceed to make random movements, but at once adapts 

 itself to the situation by a process which some authors (Loeb, Turner) have called 

 associative memory. The nature of this process is, of course, a matter of conjecture 

 and on this account it is differently conceived by different authors. Before con- 

 sidering this matter, however, we may pass in review the main facts that compel 

 us to postulate the existence of some form of memory in ants. These facts may 

 be grouped under the heads of foraging and homing, recognition of nest mates 

 and aliens, communication, imitation, co-operation and docility " (pp. 531, 532). 



" In conclusion it may be noted that all the activities of ants, their reflexes and 

 instincts, as weU as their plastic behavior, gain in precision with repetition. In 

 other words, all their activities may be secondarily mechanized to form habits, 

 in the restricted sense of the word. This is tantamount to saying that even the 

 reflexes and instincts are not so steorotyped but that they may become more so 

 by exercise during the lifetime of the individual. And not only do ants thus form 

 habits, but, as several myrmecologists have observed, these habits when once 

 formed are often hard to break. It is certain that many instincts among the 

 higher animals are at first incomplete or indefinite and are guided into their proper 

 course by stimuli that effect the organism at a later period. This is probably true 

 also of many formicine instincts. There is little doubt, more over, that the more 

 fixed or sterotyped instincts are phylogenetically the older. This fact, and the 

 close superficial resemblance of habits to instincts, has led many authors to derive 

 the latter from the former. The views on the origin of automatic behavior, how- 

 ever, are so diverse and conflicting that they cannot be satisfactorily considered 

 without entering into a discussion of the doctrines of the NeodaiTvinians, Neo- 

 lamarkians and those who believe in coincident, or organic selection. In my opinion 



we have little to gain at the present time from such a discussion It is, 



in fact, quite futile, to attempt a phylogenetic derivation of the automatic from 

 the plastic activities or vice versa, for both represent primitive and fundamental 

 tendencies of living protoplasm and hence of all organisms. As instinct, one of 

 these tendencies reaches its most complex manifestation in the Formicidae, while 

 the other blossoms in the intelligent activities of men " (pp. 543, 544). 



Professor Wheeler's book commands the attention alike of morphologists, physi- 

 ologists, and psychologists, and for each group it has much of fact, interpretation, 

 and theory that is of value. Its appearance has helped greatly to establish the 

 scientific status of work in animal behavior and comparative psychology in An:ierica. 

 Scientists who are also scholars and men of breadth and sanity of view are too 

 rare for the work of one of them to escape the world's appreciations. " Ants"" 

 stands as a comprehensive, reliable, eminently readable, thoroughly scientific 

 account of one of the most important and interesting of organisms. 



