776 RECOBD OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



have been observed to move by their own efforts, and it is not 

 impossible that they themselves regain their favourite position on the 

 ceiling of the nest when accidentally displaced. The reason of their 

 preferring this position may be from the uncomfortable attitude 

 which they are forced to assume on the floor of the nest. The 

 workers, so far as could be seen, made no attempt to replace them. It 

 may seem that an intense muscular effort would be required to sustain 

 their great weight in this position. That ants, and insects generally, 

 are excessively muscular, as compared with the larger animals, is well 

 known. And the honey-bearers are more muscular than ants 

 generally, their legs being simply bundles of powerful muscles. But 

 it is rather difficult to conceive how muscular effort can be brought 

 to bear to overcome the action of gravity in this position, unless by 

 some clasping of the terminal hooks of the feet around the excres- 

 cences of the rough ceiling. It seems more probable that support 

 is gained by the action of the sucking-disk, which ants possess in 

 common with many other insects. 



An observation of some importance in respect to the question of 

 ant intelligence is that regarding the demeanour of the ants towards 

 dead honey-bearers. In this case it is their habit to separate the 

 head and thorax from the honey-bag, burying the former in the fixed 

 cemetery which these ants usually establish in the earth outside their 

 nests. But though the honey-bag remains, full of its sweet contents, 

 the ants — either from resjiect for the dead or from lack of mental 

 power to devise a new means of getting at its honeyed freight — seem 

 to make no effort to penetrate its transparent wall. This is singular, 

 in view of tlie avidity with which they will lick up the smallest 

 portion of sweet food offered them in any uncovered condition. 



As to their anatomy, it was previously said that the whole abdomen 

 appeared, to be occupied by the honey, its organs seeming to be oblite- 

 rated, so that only a thin transparent skin remained. But anatomical 

 observation shows that this external appearance does not give the 

 true facts of the case. All the abdominal organs remain, but so 

 strangely distorted and compressed as to be almost imperceptible. 

 The fact is that any of these ants may, if necessary, be converted into 

 a honey-bearer, and that the worker, when on her way home with 

 her abdomen distended with the fruits of her nocturnal labour, has 

 made a step towards the condition of the fully developed honey- 

 bearer. 



Of the three special expansions of the intestinal tract of the 

 abdomen of the ant (the crop, the gizzard, and the stomach) it is 

 the crop, into which the oesophagus immediately opens, which is the 

 recipient of the honey. As its stores increase, by continual additions, 

 it expands more and more, pressing outward the extensible walls of 

 the abdomen, and compressing the remaining portions of the intestine 

 into a smaller and smaller space. In a fully laden honey-bearer the 

 crop has become so expanded that it fills nearly the whole interior of 

 the greatly dilated abdomen ; the dorsal vessel, or heart, being com- 

 pressed and flattened against its upper wall ; while the gizzard, 



