EXPERIMENTS WITH BURIED ANTS. 103 



they were intelligently wise in securing a treasure of 

 food before they rescued their comrade, who, though 

 in confinement, was neither in pain nor danger. So far 

 as the above ants, however, are concerned, this cannot, 

 I think, be urged. 



(3) On the 8th September I repeated the experi- 

 ment, burying some ants at 4 P.M. Up to 6.3 no attempt 

 had been made to release them. I let them out and 

 buried some more. The next morning, at 7 A.M., the 

 honey was all gone, some ants were still wandering about, 

 but no notice had been taken of the captives, whom I 

 then liberated. 



(4) I then (August 21) made exactly the same 

 experiment with Myrmicq, ruginodis, as representing 

 the other great family of ants, and with the same 

 result. 



In order to test the affection of ants belonging to 

 the same nest for one another I tried the following 

 experiments. I took six ants from a nest of F. 

 fusca, imprisoned them in a small bottle, one end of 

 which was covered with a layer of muslin. I then put 

 the muslin close to the door of the nest. The muslin 

 was of open texture, the meshes, however, being 

 sufficiently small to prevent the ants from escaping. 

 They could not only, however, see one another, but 

 communicate freely with their antennae. We now 

 watched to see whether the prisoners would be tended 

 or fed by their friends. We could not, however, 

 observe that the least notice was taken of them. The 

 experiment, nevertheless, was less conclusive than 



