COMMISSION OF ERROR. 501 



about a certain kind of locust, which in its danger remained 

 immovable, and thereby deceived the ants, * without their 

 ever discovering there was food within reach.' Leaf-cutting 

 ants occasionally carry into their nests unsuitable leaves, 

 such as grass, but these leaves are rejected, thrown out again 

 by the more experienced, so that the error appears to be 

 one of youth and inexperience. They also commit mistakes 

 in road-making in unsuitable places for instance, across 

 tramways errors that lead to the death of large numbers of 

 them every time a waggon passes. But this is for a time 

 only, till they are taught by experience to avoid the danger, 

 while their own reflection and ingenuity, their fertility in 

 resource, enable them successfully to do so (Belt). Amazon 

 ants frequently carry off ' empty shells, carcases, and other 

 useless objects,' in their expeditions against brown ants 

 (Forel). A morbid, mistaken, or misplaced perseverance 

 or pertinacity leads to wholesale waste of life in certain ants 

 (Westwood), just as it does sometimes in individual bull- 

 dogs or terriers. 



Gillies gives examples of incomplete or ' bungling work- 

 manship, and consequent weakness,' in the construction of 

 its nests by the trap-door spider of New Zealand. * What 

 shows,' says he, ' that this is something more than the un- 

 erring fatalism of what we are accustomed to call mere 

 instinct, is that instances are found of bad and blundered 

 work of various degrees of imperfection, and even of laziness 

 and neglect.' Thus his attention was occasionally drawn to 

 its nests by the 'prominent un sightliness ' of the heaps of 

 unused material accumulated for the purpose of disguise. 



We are frequently called upon to marvel at the f unerring 

 instinct ' with which members of a certain breed of pigeons, 

 tossed into the air at a given point, distant so many hundred 

 miles from home, make their way to their own dove-cot or 

 master's house in a direct line, and within, a wonderfully 

 short space of time. But it has been abundantly shown by 

 Tegetmeier and other competent authorities that this faculty 

 of home-finding or homing in the carrier or courier pigeon is 

 the result of careful tuition by man ; that it is only exception- 

 ally intelligent birds which are successful in such flights ; that 



