INTELLIGENCE IN INSECTS 207 
conclusions in the study of animal intelligence, one which 
is responsible for a great multitude of stories of doubtful 
value. Observations may have been recorded faithfully 
and accurately, but where they have not been made by in- 
vestigators thoroughly acquainted with the general behavior 
of the forms observed, mistaken interpretations are almost 
certain to arise. On the other hand, one is tortured by the 
feeling that our experimental methods often fail to give us a 
true measure of an animal’s possible attainments, and that 
it is just in meeting exceptional situations which occur in 
the animal’s natural course of life that the highest manifesta- 
tion of its intelligence is reached. 
A factor which markedly affects the behavior of many 
insects, especially the social ones, is the influence of numbers. 
Small stocks of bees, according to Buttel-Reepen, lose their 
spirit and allow themselves to become the prey of moths 
and robber bees which are not so easily tolerated by larger 
stocks. They work with less vigor and fight with less 
courage, as if conscious of the fact that in numbers there is 
strength and that their number is small. Forel says of ants 
that “the courage of each ant grows in proportion to the 
number of her comrades or friends and diminishes in just 
the proportion that she is isolated. . . . The same 
worker ant, which in the midst of her associates, is ready 
to face death ten times over, when alone and twenty steps 
away from her nest, becomes cowardly, avoids the least 
danger, and seeks safety in flight from an ant much weaker 
than herself.” In regard to Formica sanguinea Wasmann 
states that “if a numerous population inhabits a rotten 
fir stump, on the surface of which we find some of the 
ants running about, a gentle kick will at once call forth a 
whole army ready for the fray. In a moment the whole 
surface of the stump is covered with thousands of ants 
