8 THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE. 



What, however, forms the thinkable uni- 

 verse of these little ants running to and fro 

 so eagerly at my feet ? That is a question 

 which used long to puzzle me in my afternoon 

 walks. The ant has a brain and an intelligence, 

 but that brain and that intelligence must have 

 been developed out of something. Ex nihilo 

 nihil fit. You cannot think and know if you 

 have nothing to think about. The intelli- 

 gence of the bee and the fly was evolved in 

 the course of their flying about and looking 

 at things : the more they flew, and the more 

 they saw, the more they knew ; and the more 

 brain they got to think with. But the ant 

 does not generally fly, and, as with most 

 comparatively unlocomotive animals, its sight 

 is bad. True, the winged males and females 

 have retained in part the usual sharp eyes of 

 their class for they are first cousins to die 

 bees and they also possess three little eye- 

 lets or ocelli, which are wanting to the wing- 

 less neuters. Without these they would never 

 have found one another in their courtship, and 



