122 Chapter VI. 



Similar reasons to those which Emery adduces in 

 favor of "conscious adaptation" in dogs and cats, could 

 be equally well alleged for ants. When they cannot 

 enter their nest by one opening, they seek another which 

 is known to them; when they feel hungry, they make 

 a companion who has just come home with a well filled 

 stomach, feed them, and therefore tap its head with 

 their feelers and stroke its sides with their forelegs. 

 Indeed, when they feel hungry, many Myrmecophiles, 

 especially of the genus Atemeles, imitate in a surpris- 

 ing manner this habit of their hosts. 1 Such facts 

 would justify the conclusion that these animals act not 

 only adaptively, but also with conscious adaptation. 

 Nevertheless it is now universally acknowledged that 

 the sensitive instincts of ants and of their guests are 

 sufficient to explain this seemingly conscious activity on 

 their part. And, as pseudo-psychology is only too ready 

 to humanize higher animals, we must be so much the 

 more on our guard in interpreting their actions. 



3. We need not dwell on the third point of Emery's 

 reply in regard to the relation between intelligence and 

 language. He has expressed it more correctly than he 

 formerly did by describing speech "both a's a product of 

 intelligence and as a means of furthering it," and he 

 locates the "chief characteristic mark" of human intelli- 

 gence in the possession of speech. Still he should have 

 added that the power of speech in man is not only the 

 result of "special cerebral structures," but chiefly the 

 result of his spiritual soul. 



*) On this "active mimicry" see our paper, "Die Myrmekophilen 

 and Termitophilen," Leiden, 1896 ("Compte Rendu du 3me Congres 

 International de Zoologie," p. 410-440), p. 432 and ff. 



