124 INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOUR 
recognition of members of the same nest ; powers of com- 
munication ; keeping aphides for the sake of their sweet 
secretion ; collection of aphid eggs in October, hatching them 
out in the nest, and taking them in the spring to the daisies, 
on which they feed, for pasture; slave-making and slave- 
keeping, which, in some cases, is so ancient a habit that the 
enslavers are unable even to feed themselves ; keeping insects 
as beasts of burden, eg. a kind of plant-bug to carry leaves ; 
keeping beetles, etc., as domestic pets; habits of personal 
cleanliness, one ant giving another a brush-up, and being 
brushed-up in return; habits of play and recreation ; habits 
of burying the dead ; the storage of grain and nipping the 
budding rootlet to prevent further germination ; the habits 
described by Dr. Lincecum, and to a large extent confirmed 
by Dr. McCook, that Texan ants prepare a clearing around 
their nest, and six months later harvest the ant-rice, a kind of 
grass of which they are particularly fond, even, according to 
Lincecum, seeking and sowing the grain which shall yield this 
harvest ; the collection by other ants of grass to manure the 
soil on which there subsequently grows a species of fungus 
upon which they feed ; the military organization of the ecitons 
of Central America; and so forth. Now, the description of 
the habits of ants forms one of the most interesting chapters 
in natural history. But to class them all as illustrations of 
instinct is a survival of an old-fashioned method of treatment. 
To put the matter in another way. Suppose that an intelli- 
gent ant were to make observations on human behaviour as 
displayed in one of our great cities or in an agricultural 
district. Seeing so great an amount of routine work going on 
around him, might he not be in danger of regarding all this 
as evidence of hereditary instinct? Might he not find it 
difficult to obtain satisfactory evidence of the establishment of 
our habits, of the fact that this routine work has to some 
extent to be learnt? Might he not say (perhaps not wholly 
without truth), “I can see nothing whatever in the training 
of the children of these men to fit them for their life-work. 
The training of their children has no more apparent bearing 
