NOTES, CAPTURES, ETC. 161 



have no doubt the others were of the same species. Our corre- 

 spondent forgets that within the precincts of the Bank of 

 England is sufficient vegetation to support a large number of 

 larvae. The Embankment gardens, no doubt, supplied those 

 moths I saw. — J. T, C] 



Sir John Lubbock on the Habits of Ants. — On Thursday, 

 2nd June, Sir John Lubbock read a further paper on this subject 

 at the meeting of the Linnean Society. He said that in one of 

 of his former papers (Linnean Society Journ., vol. xiv. p. 278), 

 he had given a series of experiments made on ants with light of 

 different colours, in order, if possible, to determine whether ants 

 had the power of distinguishing different colours. For this pur- 

 pose he utilised the dread which ants when on their nest have of 

 light. Not unnaturally, if a nest is uncovered, they think they 

 are being attacked, and hasten to carry their young away to a 

 darker, and as they suppose a safer, place. He satisfied himself 

 by hundreds of experiments that if he exposed to light most of a 

 nest, but left any part of it covered over, the young would cer- 

 tainly be conveyed to the dark portion. In this manner he 

 satisfied himself that the different rays of the spectrum act on 

 them in a different manner from that in which they affect us ; for 

 instance, that ants are specially sensitive to the violet rays. But 

 he was anxious to go beyond this, and to attempt to determine 

 how far their limits of vision agree with ours. We all know that 

 if. a ray of white light is passed through a prism, it is broken up 

 into a beautiful band of colours — the spectrum. To our eyes 

 it is bounded by red at the one end and violet at the other, 

 the edge being sharply marked at the red end, but less abruptly 

 at the violet. But a ray of light contains, besides the rays visible 

 to our eyes, others which are called, though not with absolute 

 correctness, heat rays and chemical rays. These, so far from 

 being bounded by the limits of our vision, extend far beyond it, 

 the heat rays at the red, the chemical rays at the violet end. He 

 wished under these circumstances to determine, if possible, 

 whether the limits of vision in the case of ants was the same as 

 with us. This interesting problem he endeavoured to solve as 

 follows : — If an ant's nest be disturbed, the ants soon carry their 

 grubs and chrysalises underground again to a place of safety. 

 Sir John, availing himself of this habit, placed some ants with 

 larvse and pupae between two plates of glass about one- eighth of 



