silt JOHN LUBBOCK. 41 



antennae. In most species the power of smell was very 

 keen. On the other hand, as regarded their sense of 

 hearing, the case was very different. Over and over 

 aerain he had made the loudest and most shrill noises 

 he could with a penny pipe, a dog-whistle, a violin, 

 as well as the most piercing and startling sounds he 

 could produce with his own voice, all without effect. 

 At the same time he would not infer from this that 

 they were really deaf, though it certainly seemed 

 that their range of hearing was very different from 

 ours. Our range was, however, after all, very 

 limited, and the universe was probably full of music 

 which we could not perceive. It was far from 

 improbable that ants might produce sounds entirely 

 beyond our range of hearing ; indeed it wa s not 

 impossible that insects might possess a sense, or 

 rather perhaps sensations, of which we could no 

 more form an idea than we should have been able 

 to conceive red or green had the human race been 

 born blind. The organs of vision were in most 

 ants very complex and very conspicuous. There 

 were generally three eyes, arranged in a triangle 

 on the top of their heads, and on each side a large 

 compound eye, containing sometimes more than 2,000 

 facets between them. The single eyes probably 

 saw in the same manner as ours did. But how 

 about the compound eyes ? There were two theories 

 as to the manner in which these eyes saw. One 

 supposed that each facet acted as a separate eye. 

 But if the male ant saw a thousand oueens, only 

 when one was really present, it would seem a very 



