128 ANIMAL INTELLiaENCE. 



their instinctive adjustments. Unfortunately observations 

 on this subject are very sparse, but such as they are they 

 hold out a strong inducement for any one who has the 

 opportunity to experiment with the view of testing the 

 intelligence of those species in connection with which the 

 following observations have been made. 



Reaumur states that ants will make no attempt to enter an 

 inhabited beehive to get at the contained honey, knowing that 

 the bees will slaughter them if they do so. But if the hive is 

 uninhabited, or the bees all dead, the ants will swarm into the 

 hive as long as any honey is to be found there. 



P. Huber records that a wall which had been partly 

 erected by ants was observed by him — 



As though it were intended to support the still imfinished 

 arched roof of a large room, which was being built from the 

 opposite side. But the workers which had begun the arch had 

 given it too low an elevation for the wall on which it was to 

 rest, and if it had been continued on the same lines it would 

 have met the partition wall halfway up, and this was to be 

 £ivoided. I had just made this criticism to myself, when a new 

 arrival, after looking at the work, came to the same conclusion. 

 For it began at once to destroy what had been done, and to 

 heighten the wall on which it was supported, and to make a 

 new arch with the materials of the old one under my very eyes. 

 When the ants begin an undertaking it seems exactly as if an 

 idea slowly ripened into execution in their minds. Thus if one 

 of them finds two stalks lying crosswise on the nest, which make 

 possible the formation of a room, or some little rafters which 

 suggest the walls and the corners, it first observes the various 

 parts accurately, and then quickly and neatly heaps little pellets 

 of earth in the interspaces and alongside the stalks. It brings 

 from every side materials that seem appropriate, and some- 

 times takes such from the uncompleted works of its companions, 

 «o much is it urged on by the idea which it has once conceived, 

 and by the desire to execute it. It goes and comes and turns 

 back again, until its plan is recognisable by the others. 



Ebrard, in his ' Etudes de Moeurs ' (p. 3), gives the 

 fo]lowing remarkable instance of the display of intelli- 

 gence of F, fusca : — 



The earth was damp and the workers were in full swing. 



