N'ov. II, 1875] 



NATURE 



37 



coachman for a supply. At first this is done gently, but if time 

 passes he imperatively demands attention, or it is doubtful if 

 the stable would contain him. The coachman lives adjoining 

 Uie stable, and, much to his discomfort, the horse sometimes 

 has imaginary wants during the night, and repeats the same 

 process ; and at whatever hour this occurs, the coachman is 

 i:nGer the necessity of getting up to attend to him. 



IN the 23rd inst, there will be an election at Brlliol College, 

 :ord, to a scholarship on the foundation of Miss Hannah 

 ■kenbury, "for the encouragement of the study of Natural 

 ence," worth So/, a year, terable during residence of four 

 is; open to all such candidates as shall not exceed eight 

 ns from matriculation. Candidates are requested to com- 

 nicate their intention to the Master of Balliol by letter, on 

 or before Tuesday, the i6lh inst., enclosing testimonials. 



The formal opening of the Zoological Garden of Cincinnati 

 took place on the iSth of September. It contains sixty-six 

 _j acres, and is very well arranged for its purposes. 



Thb additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include two Macaque Monkeys (Macacus cynomolqtts) 

 from India, presented by Mrs. Tipping ; an Egyptian Goose 

 (Chcnalopi'x agyfitaca) from Africa, presented by Dr. E. Swain . 

 m Ring-necked Parrakeet (Falaornis iorquata) from India, pre. 

 jented by Miss Thirlwall ; a White-fronted Guan {Penelope jacu^ 

 C4ua), a White Eye-browed Guan {Penelope supei ciliaris) from 

 S.E. Brazil, a Vulpine Phalanger {P/ialan°ista z-iilpina) from 

 Australia, a Blue and Yellow Maccaw {Ara ararauna) from S. 

 America, two Jambu Fruit Pigeons [Plilonoftts jambu) from the 

 Jndian Archipelago, deposited ; two Upland Geese {Chlcephaga 

 magellamca) from the Falkland Islands, received in exchange. 



OBSERVATIONS ON BEES, WASPS, AND 

 ANTS* 



nrillS is a continuation of my previous papers on the same 

 ■*• subject. In them I recorded various experiments tending 

 •o show that in many cases Ants and Bees which have found a 

 store of food or of larv se certainly do not communicate the infor- 

 mation to their friends. This unexpected observation was re- 

 ceived with so much surprise, and indeed was so unexpected to 

 myself, that I determined to repeat the experiments : which I 

 have now done, with, however, the same result. To take one 

 as an illustration : I placed an P. Plaza (the small red ant) to a 

 heap of larvce, which, as is well known, are fleshy legless grubs 

 incapable of motion. I placed them about two feet from the 

 entrance to her nest. I then watched her from eleven in the 

 morning till after seven in the evening, during which time she 

 made eighty -six journeys fiom the nest to the heap of larvae, 

 carrying one off each time ; but although she had so much work 

 to do, and though the precious larvce were lying for so long 

 exposed to so many dangers and to the weather, she brought no 

 other ant to assist her in carryirrg thtm off. One of the ants I 

 observed in this way carried off one by one no less than 187 

 larvai in a day. In other instances, on the contrary, the opposite 

 result occurred. I was for some time uncertain, in the latter 

 cases, whether the ants purposely brought friends to their assist- 

 ance, or whether, as the ants are sociable insects, it merely hap- 

 pened that the one accompanied the other, as it were, by accident. 

 To test this question, I took two ants, and placed them under 

 similar circumstances, the one to a heap of larvae, the other to a 

 group of two or three, always, however, putting one in place of 

 any that was carried off; and it was quite clear that the arts 

 which were placed to the large group of larva? brought far more 

 friends to their assistance than those which had apparently only 

 two or three larvje to move. Of thirty ants which were observed, 

 those placed to a large number of larvae brought 250 friends, 

 while those placed to two or three larvae under similar circum- 

 stances only brought eighty. 



One account, much relied on as showing' the intelligence of ants, 

 has been the following observation rtade by M. Lund in BraziL 



• A paper read by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P , D.C.L., F.R.S., at the 

 Linnean Society, Nov. 4. Communicated by the author. 



Passing one day under a tree which stood almost by itself, he 

 was surprised to hear the leaves falling like rain. On examining 

 the cause of this, he found that a number of ants bad climbed 

 the tree, and were cutting off the leaves, which were then carried 

 away by companions waiting for them below. Of course it 

 might be said that the leaves which dropped fell by accident ; in 

 which case they would naturally be carried off by the ants below. 

 It occurred to me, however, that this was an observation which 

 might easily be repeated. I placed therefore a number of larvae 

 on a slip of glass, which I suspended by a tape, so that it hung 

 one-third of an inch from the surface of one of my artificisd 

 nests ; isolating it, however, in such a manner that for an ant to 

 walk to the nest she would be obliged to go thirteen feet round. 

 I then placed some black ants (P. nigra) on the glass with the 

 larvae. Each of them took a lar\'a in the usual way, and then 

 endeavoured to go by the quickest road heme. They leaned 

 over the glass and made every effort to reach down, but of course 

 in vain, though the distance was so small that they could all but 

 touch the nest with their antenna?, and even, in one or two cases, 

 succeeded in getting down by stepping on to the back of an ant 

 below. Those, however, which did not meet with any such 

 assistance, gradually, though at first requiring some help from 

 me, found their way round to the nest, and after a short time 

 there was quite a string of ants passing to and fro from the nest 

 to the lar\£E, although it would have been so easy for them to 

 throw the larsa? over the edge of the glass, or to go straight 

 home, if they would have faced a drop cf, say, one-tenth of an 

 inch. 



Moreover, I placed some fine mould wnthin half an inch of the 

 glass, so that it would have been easy for the ants, by literally 

 one minute's labour, to have constructed for themselves a stepping 

 stone up to the glass ; yet they did not adopt any of these expe- 

 dients, but for h ms together, and by hundreds, continued to 

 make the long jomney round. I confess this experiment, which 

 I repeated on several occasions, surprised me very much. 



As my previous experiments, which showed that bees did not 

 by any means in all cases bring their friends to share stores of 

 food which they had discovered, have been much questioned by 

 bee-keepers, I have repeated them again. 



No doubt, if honey is put in an exposed place, so that it is 

 found by one bee, it is most natural that others should also find 

 their way to it ; but this does not, according to my experience, 

 happen if the honey is concealed. For instance, I put a bee to 

 some honey in a flowerpot placed on its side, and so arranged 

 that the bee had only a small orifice through which to enter. 

 Under these circumstances, from a quarter to seven in the morn- 

 ing till a quarter past seven in the evening, she made fifty-nine 

 journeys, and during the whole of this time only one other bee 

 found her way to the honey. 



I found that bees soon accustomed themselves to look for 

 honey on papers of particular colours. For instance, on 

 Sept. 13 I placed a bee to some honey on a slip of glass on 

 green paper, and after she had made twelve journeys to and 

 from the hive I put red paper where the green had been, and 

 placed another drop of honey on a green paper, at a distance 

 of about a foot. The bee returned, however, to the honey on 

 the green paper. I then gently moved the green paper, with 

 the bee on it, back to the old place. W'hen the bee had gone, 

 I replaced the green paper by a yellow one, and put the green 

 again a foot off. After the usual interval she retuined again to 

 the green. I repeated the same proceeding, but with orange 

 paper instead of green. She returned again to the green. I 

 now did the same with white paper : she returned agam to the 

 green. Again I tried her with blue : she again came to the 

 green. I then reversed the position of the blue and green 

 papers, but still she returned to the green. I repeated this ex- 

 periment with other bees, and with the same result, though it 

 seemed to me that in some cases they did not distinguish so 

 clearly between green and blue as between green and other 

 colours. In other respects they seemed to adhere equally closely 

 to any colour to which they were made accustomed. 



As regards wasps, my experiments fully confirm those pre- 

 viously made, and justify everything I have said with reference 

 to their great industry. Indeed, they begin to work earlier in 

 the morning and cease later in the evening than bees, continuing 

 all day with the utmost assiduity. Thus, a wasp which I 

 watched on the icth of September, worked from seven in the 

 morning until seven in the evening without a moment's inter- 

 mission, during which time she made no less than ninety-four 

 visits to the honey. As is the case with bees, if a wasp is put to 

 exposed honey, others soon come. To determine this, if pos- 



