35^ Animal Life and Intelligence. 



in the big-brained mammals. Still, their intelligence, 

 though of a different order and on a different plane, may 

 well be as high. And Darwin has said that the so-called 

 brain of the ant may perhaps be regarded as the most 

 wonderful piece of matter in the world. 



That ants have some power of communication seems to 

 be proved by the interesting experiments of Sir John 

 Lubbock. He found that they could carry information to 

 the nest of the presence of larvae, and that the greater the 

 number of larvae to be fetched, the greater the number of 

 ants brought out to fetch them in a given time. On one 

 occasion Sir John Lubbock put an ant to some larvae. 

 ** She examined them carefully, and went home without 

 taking one. At this time no other ants were out of the 

 nest. In less than a minute she came out again with eight 

 friends, and the little group made straight for the heap of 

 larvae. When they had gone two-thirds of the way, I im- 

 prisoned the marked ant ; the others hesitated a few 

 minutes, and then, with curious quickness, returned home." 

 This is only one observation out of many ; and it shows 

 (1) that since the marked ant took no larva home, she 

 must have given information which led the others to come 

 out — unless we can suppose that the smell of the larvae 

 she had examined still hung about her ; and (2) that the 

 communication was not detailed, and probably was no 

 more than "Come," for, when the leader of the party was 

 removed, the rest knew not * where to go — very possibly 

 knew not why they had been summoned. 



Passing now to creatures of lower organization, it is 

 exceedingly difficult so to divest ourselves of our own special 

 mental garments as to imagine what their simple and 

 rudimentary constructs are like. Perhaps we may fairly 

 surmise that, as visual olfactory and auditory organs 

 develop, and differentiate from a common basis of more 

 simple sensation, the process of outward projection has its 

 rudimentary inception. The earthworm, which finds its way 



* Professor Max Miiller suggests to me that perhaps the ants were 

 frightened. 



