SOCIAL COMMUNITIES OF BEES AND ANTS 19 
connected with it only by a passage several feét in length. 
Under these circumstances it would be obviously a saving of 
time and labour to drop the food on to the nest, or at any rate 
to spring down with it, so as to save one journey. But though 
I have frequently tried the experiment, my ants never adopted 
either of these courses. I arranged matters so that the glass 
on which the food was placed was only raised one-third of an 
inch above the nest. The ants tried to reach down, and the 
distance was so small that occasionally, if another ant passed 
underneath just as one was reaching down, the upper one 
could step on to its back, and so descend; but this only 
happened accidentally, and they did not think of throwing the 
particles down, nor, which surprised me very much, would 
they jump down themselves. J then placed a heap of mould 
close to the glass, but just so far that they could not reach 
across. It would have been quite easy for any ant, by moving 
a particle of earth for a quarter of an inch, to have made a 
bridge by which the food might have been reached, but this 
simple expedient did not occur to them.” 
Now, when we remember that the method of intelligence is 
to profit by chance experience, while the method of reason is, 
with foresight and intention, to adapt means to ends, we shall 
see that to move a straw even a quarter of an inch, or to make 
a bridge with particles of mould, would require rational and 
not merely intelligent powers. Chance experience would not 
supply the necessary data to be utilized by intelligence when 
repetition had established an association in the conscious 
situation. Granting that the ants were intelligent but not 
rational, they could not be expected to overcome the difficulties, 
simple as they seem to us, which Lord Avebury placed in their 
path. Had they been overcome the fact would be more difficult 
to explain than the use of a stone tool by the sand wasp, since 
this could more readily be hit upon by chance experience. 
And what these valuable experiments, of which kind more 
are needed, seem to show is, that the ant, probably the most 
intelligent of all insects, has no claim to be regarded as a 
rational being. 
