330 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



of the sand. Whether or not ants want a sense of smell or 

 other means of guiding them to the whereabouts of their 

 neighbours or children, is a subject difficult of determination 

 either towards a positive or negative result. And I am the 

 more inclined to wonder at the incapacity of the insects to 

 discover their buried companions, since they appear to be 

 perfectly capable of detecting them at a considerable dis- 

 tance above ground. When a chrysalis was placed in a spot 

 remote from the nest, and an ant placed within a foot or so 

 of the chrysalis, the insect would occasionlly seem to be 

 attracted to the neighbourhood of the object. I frequently 

 observed that if an ant happened to crawl within two or 

 three inches of the chrysalis as it lay on the ground, it 

 appeared to become conscious of the object, although at the 

 same time it seemed ignorant of its precise locality. In 

 such a case the insect would proceed hither and thither in 

 an erratic fashion, but would continue to hover or rotate 

 around the chrysalis until it seized the object and bore it off 

 in triumph in its jaws. Relatively to the size of the ant, we 

 must consider this latter incident by no means a slight tribute 

 to its acuteness. 



The busy scene resulting from the disturbance of the 

 nest proceeded actively during at least two hours. The nest 

 appeared to be by no means a large one. At the end of 

 two hours, however, the ants were still rushing hither and 

 thither, bent on errands unknown to their observers, 

 although the work of conveying the chrysalides had at the 

 lapse of the period just mentioned entirely ceased. Five 

 and a half hours after the nest had been alarmed, not an ant 

 was visible over the disturbed area, and our next task was 

 that of investigating the manner in which the insects had 

 dispersed themselves and their belongings in their new 

 habitation by carefully removing the flat sloping stone 

 already mentioned as that beneath which the main stream 

 of the ants had disappeared. Not an insect was to be seen 

 after this operation was performed, and it was only after the 

 removal of several small stones which lay below the flat 



