92 ANIMAL INTELLK^ENCE. 



the dead body of one of their comrades ; then two others, and 

 so on, until all were ready to march. First walked two ants 

 bearing a body, then two without a burden ; then two others 

 with another dead ant, and so on, until the line was extended 

 to about forty pairs, and the procession now moved slowly on- 

 wards, followed by an irregular body of about two hundred ants. 

 Occasionally the two laden ants stopped, and laying down the 

 dead ant, it was taken up by the two walking unburdened behind 

 them, and thus, by occasionally relieving each other, they 

 arrived at a sandy spot near the sea. The body of ants now 

 commenced digging with their jaws a number of holes in the 

 ground, into each of which a dead ant was laid, where they now 

 laboured on until they had filled up the ants' graves. This 

 did not quite finish the remarkable circumstances attending 

 this funeral of the ants. Some six or seven of the ants 

 had attempted to run off without performing their share of 

 the task of digging ; these were caught and brought back, when 

 they were at once attacked by the body of ants and killed upon 

 the spot. A single grave was quickly dug, and they were all 

 dropped into it. 



The Rev. W. Farren White also, in his papers on ants 

 published in the 'Leisure Hour' (1880), after alluding to 

 the above case, corroborates it by some interesting obser- 

 vations of his own. He says : — 



Several of the little sextons I observed with dead in theii 

 mandibles, and one in the act of burying a corpse. . . . 

 I should mention that the dead are not interred without con- 

 siderable difficulty, in consequence of the sides of the trays being 

 almost perpendicular. The work of the sextons continued until 

 no dead bodies remained upon the surface of the nest, but all 

 were interred in the extramural cemeteries. Afterwards I 

 removed the trays, and turned the contents of the formicarium 

 upside down, and then I placed six trays on the surface of the 

 earth, two of which I filled with sugar for food. All six were 

 used freely as cemeteries, being crowded with the corpses of 

 the Httle people and their young, the larvae which had perished 

 in the disruption of their home. 



I have noticed in one of my formicaria a subterranean 

 cemetery, where I have seen some ants burying their dead by 

 placing earth above them. One ant was evidently much affected, 

 and tried to exhume the bodies, but the united exertions of the 

 yellow sextons were more than sufficient to neutralise the effort 

 of the disconsolate mourner. The cemetery was now converted 



