Architecture in the Animal Kingdom. 109 



ing, where the rain can not enter; those old oak 

 stumps, however, are just the thing; therefore we 

 move to that place." We, however, maintain : With- 

 out admitting animal intelligence the whole affair is 

 explained much better from the instinctive association 

 of sense representations. The ants do not like the 

 old place any more on account of the disagreeable 

 experiences undergone there, therefore they look for 

 another. That under these circumstances, just those 

 dry oak-stumps appear to them to be so very inviting, 

 follows from the suitable disposition of the sensitive 

 cognition and appetite. That ants in such cases are 

 intellectually conscious of the suitableness of this 

 change of nests, is an unwarranted assumption to which 

 we reply: quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. In 

 other words : we are not allowed arbitrarily to attrib- 

 ute a human course of reasoning to animals in the 

 sense of "popular" psychology. Such men as L. 

 Buechner may find a proof of the "high intelligence" 

 of ants in the fact that, e. g., in low-lands Leptothorax 

 acervorum resides under barks of trees, but in the 

 Alps under stones. 1 Although we consider the power 

 of adaptation manifested by the sanguineas in their 

 nest-building instincts far more deserving of admira- 

 tion, yet we are far from regarding even this power as 

 an instance of animal intelligence, but, rather, of animal 

 instinct, the various activities of which depend neither 



*) Buechner, "Geistesleben der Thiere," p. 73. In this book the 

 author calls Leptothorax acervorum erroneously Lasius acervorum. 

 Romanes in his book, "Die Geistige Entwicklung im Thierreich" 

 (Leipzig, 1885), p. 268, was surely referring to the same passage of 

 Buechner, because he still more erroneously calls that ant Lasius 

 acerborum. 



