INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



who might attempt to save the body of the toad from the attacks 

 of the beetles, the place where it was deposited. 



61. Among the innumerable proofs that animals are capable of 

 comparing, and to a certain extent generalising their ideas, so as 

 to deduce from them at least their more immediate consequences, 

 and thereby to use experience as a guide of conduct, instead of 

 instinct, Reaumur * mentions the case of ants, which being 

 established near a bee-hive, fond as they are of honey, never 

 attempt to approach it so long as it is inhabited ; but if they 

 happen to be near a deserted hive, they eagerly rush into it, and 

 devour all the honey which remains there. How can we account 

 for this abstinence from the inhabited hive, in spite of the strong- 

 appetite for its contents, so plainly manifested in the case of the 

 empty one, if not by the knowledge that on some former occasion 

 a rash attack upon an inhabited hive was visited by some ter- 

 rific vengeance on the part of the bees ? 



62. Dr. Franklin was of opinion that ants could communicate 

 their ideas to each other ; in proof of which he related to Kalm, 

 the Swedish traveller, the following fact. Having placed a pot 

 containing, treacle in a closet infested with ants, these insects 

 found their way into it, and were feasting very heartily when he 

 discovered them. He then shook them out, and suspended the 

 pot by a string from the ceiling. By chance one ant remained, 

 which, after eating its fill, with some difficulty found its way up 

 the string, and thence reaching the ceiling, escaped by the wall 

 to its nest. In less than half an hour a great company of ants 

 sallied out of their holes, climbed the wall, passed along ceiling, 

 crept along the string into the pot, and began to eat again. This 

 they continued to do until the treacle was all consumed, one swarm 

 running up the string while another passed down. It seems indis- 

 putable that the one ant had in this instance conveyed news of the 

 booty to his comrades, who would not otherwise have at once 

 directed their steps in a body to the only accessible route, f 



63. A similar example of knowledge gained by experience, in 

 the case of the hive-bee, is related by Mr. Wailes.J He observed 

 that all the bees, on their first visit to the blossoms of a passion- 

 flower (Passiflora ccerulea] on the wall of his house, were for a 

 considerable time puzzled by the numerous overwrapping rays of 

 the nectary, and only after many trials, sometimes lasting two or 

 three minutes, succeeded in finding the shortest way to the honey 

 at the bottom of the calyx;, but experience having taught them 



* Memoires, vol. v., p. 709. 

 t Kirby and Spence, vol. ii., p. 422. 

 Entomological Magazine, vol. i., p. 525. 

 140 



