The Ants 



writer Bethe, who wrote, in 1898, on the psychological qualities 

 of ants and bees. He shows, for example, that while we see, all 

 we know about bees and other insects is that they are influenced 

 by the light and that it would be most unscientific to say that 

 they do anything as highly psychical as seeing until it is proved. 

 Some of the peculiar and apparently highly intelligent things which 

 ants do, such as recognizing the enormous number of members 

 of the same colony and fighting instantly members of other 

 colonies, and such as finding their way to their own nests and to 

 food supplies and communicating intelligence of the location of 

 food supplies from one to the other, have been carefully tested 

 by this author who concludes that he can find nothing in the phe- 

 nomena exhibited by bees or ants to prove the existence of any 

 psychical quality. " They learn nothing, but act mechanically in 

 whatever they do, their complicated reflexes being set off by 

 simple physiological stimuli."* 



It is interesting to note in passing that Bethe's conclusions 

 were anticipated for a number of years by the famous American 

 naturalist, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain). If any reader does 

 not believe this let him consult Chapter XXII of a "Tramp Abroad". 



No one who has read Bethe's account of how ants find their 

 way by ant-traveled paths and how easily they are lost when 

 but a very short distance from the path, can help thinking of Mark 

 Twain's inimitable "chapter in natural history" which also wakes 

 a responsive chord in the mind of every one who has attempted 

 to see intelligence and design in the movements of the isolated 

 ant. " During many summers, now, I have watched him," says 

 Twain, "when I ought to have been in better business, and I 

 have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any 

 more sense than a dead one. * * * I admit his industry, of 

 course ; he is the hardest working creature in the world, when 

 anybody is looking, but his leatherheadedness is the point I 

 make against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, 

 and then what does he do ? Go home ? No, he goes anywhere 

 but home. He doesn't know where home is. His home may 

 be only three feet away, no matter, he can't find it. He makes 

 his capture, as I have said; it is generally something which can be 

 of no sort of use to himself or anybody else ; it is usually seven times 



* Albrecht Bethe, Archiv. f. d. Ges. Phys. LXX. 15. 100. January, 1898. 

 A Review by Caswell Grave, American Naturalist, Vol. XXXII, pp. 437-439. 



