233 STATEMENT BY 



seized on tlic piirticles of sugar, and soon discovering 

 the only way open to them, viz. up the string, over 

 the transom and down the window-frame, rejoined their 

 fellows on the sill, whence they could resume the old 

 route down the steep wall into the garden. Before 

 long the route over the new track from the sill to the 

 sugar, by the window-frame, transom, and string was 

 completely established ; and so passed a day or two 

 without anything new. Then one morning it was 

 noticed that the ants were stopping at their old place, 

 that is, the window-sill, and getting sugar there. Not 

 a single individual any longer traversed the path that 

 led thence to the sugar above. This was not because 

 the store above had been exhausted ; but because some 

 dozen little fellows were working away vigorously and 

 incessantly up aloft in the vessel, dragging the sugar 

 crumbs to its edge, and throwing them down to 

 their comrades below on the sill, a sill which with 

 their limited range of vision they could not possibly 

 see ! ' 



Leuckart also made a similar experiment. Round a 

 ^ree which was frequented by ants, he spread a band 

 soaked in tobacco water. The ants above the band 

 after awhile let themselves drop to the ground, but 

 the ascending ants were long baffled. At length he 

 saw them coming back, each with a pellet of earth in 

 its mouth, and thus they constructed a road for them- 

 8<4ves, over which they streamed up the tree. 



