422 'Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. 



MoGGRiDGE [loc. eit., p. 98) tells us that the grasshopper was "too 

 large to pass through the door, so they tried to dismember it. 

 Failing in this, several ants drew the wings and legs as far back as 

 possible, while others gnawed through the muscles where the strain 

 was greatest. They succeeded at last in thus pulling it in." It is 

 a pity this account is so meager. If there were only two ants to 

 each member, one pullmg it out and the other gnawmg at the 

 place of greatest strain, we would have an undoubted case of intel- 

 ligent cooperation; whereas, if there were a large number of ants 

 attacking each member, the fact that some happened to gnaw at 

 the point of greatest strain does not prove intelligence. To repeat, 

 there is nothing in the anecdote, as recorded, to show that this was 

 was not a case of accidental rather than of mutual cooperation. 



A case cited by Romanes ('92, p. 99) is so remarkable that I 

 quote it in full. "In Herr Gredler's monastery, one of the 

 monks had been accustomed for some months to put food regularly 

 on his window sill for ants coming up from the garden. In con- 

 sequence of Herr Gredler's communications, he took it into 

 his head to put the bait for the ants, pounded sugar, in an old ink 

 stand, and hung this up by a string to a cross piece of the window 

 and left it hanging freely. A few ants were in the bait. They 

 soon found their way out over the string with the grains ot sugar 

 and so their way back to their friends. Before long a procession 

 was arranged on the new road from the wmdow sill along the 

 string to the spot where the sugar was, and so things went on for 

 two days, nothing fresh occurring. But one day the procession 

 stopped at the old feeding place on the window-sill and took the 

 food thence without going up to the pendant sugar jar. Closer 

 observation revealed that about a dozen of the rogues in the jar 

 above were busily and unwearyingly carrying the grains of sugar 

 to the edge of the pot and throwing them over to their comrades 

 down below." 



Remarkable.^ Yes; but before passing judgment, let us 

 recall a few results of experiments. It is a common occurrence to 

 have different ants of the same species doing different things at 

 the same time. I have had a portion of the ants of a colony busy 

 conveying pupae into an artificial nest, while the remainder were 

 industriously excavating holes in the sand. Likewise, in my 

 cardboard stage experiments, I have observed at one and the same 

 time, one set of ants storing pupae under the incline, another set 



