ee 
11 
about five minutes they reappeared, followed by others. All fell 
into rank, walking regularly and slowly two by two, until they 
arrived at the spot where lay the dead bodies of the soldier ants. 
In a few minutes two of the ants advanced and took up the dead 
body of one of their comrades, then two others, and so on, until all 
were ready to march. First walked two ants bearing a body, then 
two without a burden; then two others with another dead ant, and 
so on until the line extended to about forty pairs, and the procession 
now moved slowly onwards followed by an irregular body of about 
200 ants. Occasionally the two laden ants stopped, and laying © 
down the dead ant it was taken up by the two walking unburdened 
behind them, and thus, by occasionally relieving each other, they 
arrived at a sandy spot near the sea. The body of ants now com- 
menced digging, with their jaws, a number of holes in the ground, 
into each of which a dead ant was laid, where they now laboured on 
until they had filled up the ants’ graves. This did not quite finish 
the remarkable circumstances attending these obsequies. Some six 
or seven of the ants had meanly attempted to run off without per- 
forming their share of the task of digging, these were caught and 
brought back, when they were attacked by the whole body of the 
ants and killed upon the spot. A single grave was then roughly 
dug for the whole of the malefactors and they were indiscriminately 
_ dropped into it. You observe the brave warriors were respectfully 
_ deposited in separate graves, while the guilty ants were promptly 
; executed and thrown into one common unhallowed grave! Ants 
have been seen to bridge over a small rill by pushing a thin twig 
across it, and when this was found tvo narrow for the transit of the 
- main body, a number of ants ran along the edges of the twig and 
adhered to the sides, until it was sufficiently broad for the main 
: body to cross conveniently. On another occasion when passing 
_ over a bank of crumbling sand which afforded no stable footing, a 
number of them adhered together and formed a firm gangway for 
their companions to pass over. Such acts as these argue a degree 
_of instinct which may almost be called reason. And yet on the 
_ other hand we have Sir John Lubbock’s careful and repeated 
_ experiments, in which he invariably found that if he moved the 
coveted store of honey or larve even a couple of inches from its 
_ previous position, the ants were quite unable to find it, and wandered 
aimlessly about for hours, until they stumbled upon it at last quite 
accidentally. He took the trouble to trace out some of these devious 
wanderings with the sharp point of a lead pencil, and the resulting 
diagrams are confused mazes of intersecting lines, meandering 
about without end or aim. With all this conflicting evidence before 
‘Us, I think the only conclusion we can come to is, that placed in 
certain definite and natural circumstances, the inherited and trans- 
s 
