136 Chapter III. 



niger he fastened a strip of tin with some honey. 

 After the ants had for a long time been allowed to 

 visit the honey, the strip^was gradually raised by a 

 screw, until from their pathway the ants could no 

 longer get at the honey. Though it would have been 

 easy enough to heap up a little earth under the strip of 

 tin, it never occurred to the ants to do so ; the honey 

 remained beyond their reach. This experiment, there- 

 fore, had the very same results as Lubbock's, namely, 

 that the ants were not capable of forming the simplest 

 intelligent conclusion, which would have led them to 

 employ their building skill for the purpose of getting 

 at the honey. 1 



I may add here a few observations and experiments 

 of my own. Since it might be objected against Lub- 

 bock's results, that he took for his experiments some 

 ant-species "little endowed with intelligence," namely, 

 Lasius and Myrmica, I chose the most intelligent ants, 

 namely, Formica sanguinea 2 and her allied slaves as 

 subjects for experiments, of which only a brief extract 

 is here presented. 



In the front-nest of my above mentioned observa- 

 tion-nest (see p. 23) a piece of wood formed a com- 

 modious bridge, over which the ants could pass to the 

 rim of the glass and thence into the top-nest. By their 

 earth-constructions in the front-nest the ants had 

 gradually lowered the bridge, so that the distance 



1 ) Bethe infers from this experiment that ants do not even possess 

 sensitive perception and cognition. This inference is too far-reaching, 

 and is owing to his mistaking intelligence for sensitive cognition. See 

 "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen," p. 73. 



2 ) Forel also ("Fourmis de la Suisse," p. 443) states that F. 

 sanguinea deserves the palm for intelligence. 



