RELATION BETWEEN ANTS. 151 
2. Of the Manner in which Ants ave guided 
in their several Excursions, 
An ingenious idea, offered by a man of 
celebrity, is sometimes sufficient to fix 
the opinion of naturalists, who would 
rather adopt his idea than take the 
trouble of examining for themselves. It 
is thus, that M. Bonnet, in comparing 
the odour from ants to those threads 
which caterpillars, living in a republic, 
leave after them, has concluded, that 
these insects are guided only by smell. 
He remarked, that he could arrest the 
passage of ants, by passing his finger oc- 
casionally across their path; but he had 
not perhaps reflected, that the odour from 
his hand was a sufficient barrier to their 
progress: this experiment, however, is 
not always attended with the same suc- 
cess. Some ants are stopped at the mo- 
ment, by the new sensation they experi- 
ence, but the greater part pass boldly the 
space, where we should have imagined 
the invisible traces of their passage inter- 
H 4 
