60 Chapter II. 



the Lomechusas as such, but merely toward their 

 excessive number, which became disagreeable to them. 

 Perhaps they were unable to feed so many beetles and 

 had therefore expelled half of them. At any rate, 

 such phenomena prove to a certainty that ants are 

 not to be regarded as mere "instinct automatons" or 

 "reflex machines." We must ascribe to them sensile 

 mental faculties, which by way of different percep- 

 tions and representations cause great variability in the 

 display of their instinctive impulses. But, beyond this, 

 nothing is required to explain satisfactorily the psychic 

 life of the vertebrates. Hence, there is no need of 

 "animal intelligence," neither in the case of ants nor 

 in that of the higher animals. 



A beautiful instance of how sensile experiences of 

 ants lead them to acquire certain individual peculiar- 

 ities of character, I witnessed in the case of a F. rufi- 

 barbis of the same mixed colony. She was a worker, 

 easily distinguishable from the others by her small size. 

 She used to visit regularly the glass bulb of the feed- 

 ing tube (see diagram, p. 23), where she would lick 

 the honey or sugar in order to supply the other ants 

 in the main nest from the sweet juice stored up in 

 her crop. Although F. ruilbarbis belongs to a very 

 irritable and pugnacious species, yet this ant had 

 gradually become so tame that she would allow her- 

 self to be fed from my hand. As soon as I removed 

 the cork of the glass bulb, she would come out and 

 look for food on the outside. I would then present 

 to her a needle dipped in honey. At first she darted 

 back, but after a few seconds of hesitation she would 

 approach, examine the needle with her feelers and 



