30 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



organised system can be watched wherever a bee-hive 

 is inhabited in an English garden. The 'gardening 

 ants,' which collect pieces of vegetable, and pile them 

 up to rot in the dark interior of their nests until they 

 are covered with a kind of fungus, on which the ants 

 live, make a walled street, partly roofed, up to the 

 plant whose leaves they propose to cut, and divide 

 the labour according to the size of the workers. The 

 largest act as road-menders, and repair the 'perma- 

 nent way ' when it becomes inj ured by traffic. The 

 next in size cut the leaves and carry them, and the 

 very small ants fuss around, and being unable to cut 

 leaves, get in the way, and are sometimes carried 

 themselves on a leaf in whose transportation they are 

 anxious to assist. The mechanical societies of these 

 insects are wholly beyond explanation. The analogies 

 of reason which hold good in the case of the higher 

 animals must fail when applied to any theory of 

 rational development in the ant and bee. Their 

 instinct is born fully developed, whereas in the higher 

 animals there is at least the rational attribute, that 

 though they do not progress as a class, individuals 

 do occasionally develop social tendencies which are 

 analogous with our own. 



