Mind in Animals. 349 



feed, cut it when ripe, and store it in their subterranean 

 granaries. Arrant slaveholders are others, who make sys- 

 tematic raids upon neighboring species, carry off their yet 

 unhatched cocoons, and rear them in their own nests to be 

 their servants. Somewhat recent discoveries show that there 

 are ants which bury their dead. Two pairs of bearers are 

 chosen to carry the corpse, one pair relieving the other when 

 tired, while the main body, often several hundred in number, 

 follow behind. So much could be said about ants, so closely 

 do their performances resemble the customs of human civili- 

 zation, that the subject could never grow uninteresting, but 

 we must, for the present, forbear. All these various per- 

 formances could not be possible were there not some way by 

 which communication, or interchange of ideas, could be 

 carried on among the individual members of the same com- 

 munity. Sometimes one species of ant is capable of carrying 

 on a conversation, so to speak, with another. Bees, wasps 

 and ants are the best linguists of the insect race, their lan- 

 guage being chiefly conducted by means of their antennae. 



Who has not often observed two dogs, members of the 

 same household, holding sweet converse with each other? 

 Pug and Gyp were two animals that belonged to the fam- 

 ily where I spent a summer vacation. They thought much 

 of each other when romping together in the yard, or in 

 foraging the neighboring woods and fields for rabbits and 

 ground-hogs. Never would they start out on an expedition 

 for game without having previously laid their plans. It was 

 interesting and amusing to watch them. They would bring 

 their heads into close contiguity, remaining in this position 

 for two or three minutes, when, by mutual consent, they 

 would separate, look each other in the eyes, and then start 

 off in different directions for the scene of their projected 

 enterprise. Times out of number I have observed such 

 behavior and have always discovered that they meant 

 something of the kind. There were no audible utterances, 

 no visible gestures, yet there was an interchange of ideas. 



