56 Chapter II. 



country and escape under sheltering grass tufts or 

 clods of earth; sometimes, even, in the midst of her 

 righting, rescuing or fleeing comrades, a sanguinea 

 presses herself to the soil motionless and, though 

 mostly for a short time, has recourse to the instinctive 

 trick of "feigning death ;" in opposition to these, other 

 sanguineas, finally, seem to be seized by a strange 

 mixture of courage and fear, by a sort of impotent 

 rage : not venturing to attack the real foe, they vent 

 their spite against other objects ; with sprawling feet 

 they crawl along the ground, and with their heads bent 

 down they furiously bite the sand or stalks of heather, 

 attacking everything, in fact, but the finger of the 

 great human monster that robs their nest of Lomc- 

 chusas 1 and other favorite guests. Such scenes as the 

 one just described I have observed hundreds of times, 

 and am so accustomed to them, that I find them quite 

 natural; nevertheless, they are of the utmost import- 

 ance for comparing the psychic faculties of ants and 

 those of the higher animals. Packs of wolves or hordes 

 of apes on similar occasions could display no greater 

 variability of individual character and of individual 

 action, than such a colony of sanguineas. Yet, ants, 

 we are told, are "instinct automatons," and apes or 

 wolves are not ! 



*) In the colonies of the North American subspecies of sanguinea, 

 F. rubicunda, the European Lomechusa strumosa is represented by an 

 allied species, Xenodusa cava. Rev. H. Muckermann, S. J., of Prairie 

 du Chien (Wisconsin) has recently found also the curious pseudogyne 

 ant form, which is due to the education of the larvae of Lomechusini 

 by the ants, in the colonies of F. rubicunda. See Wasmann, "Neue 

 Bestaetigungen der Low^c/tM^a-Pseudogynentheorie" (Verhandl. der 

 Deutsch. Zool. Gesellsch. 1902, p. 98-108 and PI. II.). We shall give 

 the figure of Xenodusa later on, opposite p. 181. 



