By Sir John LuhhocJc, Bart. 57 



sending their friends to the honey, I have made a number of ex- 

 periments, to one only of which I will now refer. I put an 

 ant belonging to one of my nests to some food ; she partook of it 

 and then returned to the nest, where no doubt she distributed it to 

 her friends and to the larvae. Having done so, she came out again 

 as usual for more, accompanied by no less than ten friends. I did 

 tiot however allow her to walk to the food, but took her up on a slip 

 of paper and carried her to it. The friends wandered about a little, 

 but by degrees returned to the nest, and not one of them found the 

 food. This I repeated thirty-nine times with a similar result. The 

 other experiments which I have made all point in the same direction, 

 and I have not been able to satisfy myself that ants possess any 

 •power of description, or of sending their friends to a store they have 

 discovered. I believe therefore that when large numbers of ants 

 tjome to food, they follow one another, being also to a considerable 

 extent guided by scent. 



Some species however act much more in association than others. 

 Formica fusca, for instance much less than Lasius niger. 

 ■ To ascertain if possible whether ants have the power of summoning 

 one another by sound, I tried the following experiments. I put out 

 on the board where one of my nests of Lasius flavus was usually 

 fed, six small pillars of wood about an inch-and-a-half high, and on 

 one of them I put some honey. A number of ants were wandering 

 ■about on the board itself in search of food, and the nest itself was 

 immediately above and about 12 inches from the board. I then put 

 three ants to the honey, and when each had sufficiently fed I im- 

 prisoned her and put another ; thus always keeping three ants at 

 the honey, but not allowing them to go home. If then they could 

 summon their friends by sound, there ought soon to be many ants 

 at the honey. The results were as follows : 



September 8th. Began at 11, a.m. Up to 3 o^clock only seven 

 ants found their way to the honey, while about as many ran 

 up the other pillars. The arrival of these seven, therefore, 

 was not more than would naturally result from the numbers 

 running about close by. At 3 we allowed the ants then on 

 the honey to return home. The result was that from 3.6, 



