376 EXPERIMENTS ON 



After which she did not come again till 8, when we 

 left off watching. During the whole of this time she 

 did not bring a single ant to help her. Surely it would 

 have been in many respects desirable to do so. It will 

 be seen that some of the pupae remained lying about 

 and exposed to many dangers from 1 1 a.m. till 7 p.m. ; 

 and when she left off working at that time, there were 

 still a number of the pupae unsecured ; and yet, though 

 she had taken so much pains herself, she did not bring 

 or send others to assist her in her efforts or to complete 

 her work. 



I have given the above cases at length, though I 

 fear they may appear tedious and prolix, because they 

 surprised me much. 



No doubt it more frequently happens that if an ant 

 or a bee discovers a store of food, others soon find their 

 wa}' to it, and I have been anxious to ascertain in what 

 manner this is effected. Some have regarded the fact 

 as a proof of the power of communication ; others, on 

 the contrary, have denied that it indicated any such 

 power. Ants, they said, being social animals, naturally 

 accompany one another ; moreover, seeing a companion 

 coming home time after time with a larva, they would 

 naturally conclude that they also would find larvae in 

 the same spot. It seemed to me that it would be very 

 interesting to determine whether the ants in question 

 were brought to the larvae, or whether they came 

 casually. I thought therefore that the following experi- 

 ment might throw some light on the question, viz. : to 

 place several small quantities of honey in similar 

 situations, then to bring an ant to one of them, and 

 subsequently to register the number of ants visiting 

 each of the parcels of honey, of course imprisoning for 

 the time every ant which found her way to the honey 

 except the first. If, then, many more came to the 

 honey which had been shown to the first ant than to 

 the other parcels, this would be in favour of their 



