12 Wild Life in a Southern County 



is the prerogative of reason. Ants cannot, under certain 

 conditions, distinguish their own special haunts. Across 

 a garden path I frequented there was the track of in- 

 numerable ants; their ceaseless journeyings had worn a 

 visible path leading from the border on one side to the 

 border on the other, where was a tiny hole, into which 

 they each disappeared in turn. Happily, the garden was 

 neglected, otherwise the besom of the gardener would have 

 swept away all traces of the highway they had made. 

 Watching the stream of life pouring swiftly along the 

 track, it seemed to me that, like men walking hurriedly in 

 well-known streets, they took no note of marks or bear- 

 ings, but followed each other unhesitatingly in the groove. 

 When street-pavements are torn up, the human stream 

 disperses and flows out on either side till it discovers by 

 experience the most convenient makeshift passage. What 

 would be the result if this Watling-street of the ants were 

 interrupted? With a fragment of wood I rubbed out 

 three inches of the path worn in the shallow film of soil 

 deposited over the old gravel, smoothing that much down 

 level. Instantly the crowd came to a stop. The foremost 

 ant halted at the edge where the groove now terminated, 

 turned round and had an excited conversation with the 

 next by means of their antennae ; a third came up, a fourth 

 and fifth a crowd collected, in fact. Now, there was no 

 real obstruction nothing to prevent them from rushing 

 across to the spot where the path recommenced. Why, 

 then, did they pause ? Why, presently, begin to explore, 

 right and left, darting to one side and then to the other 

 examining? Was it not because an old and acquired 

 habit was suddenly uprooted? Surely infallible instinct 

 could have carried them across the space of three inches 

 without any trouble of investigation ? 



