The Homing of the Uymenoptera 



29 



havior? Not many years ago, it was almost universally 

 believed that there is a mysterious impulse which guides 

 insects and other animals. Even today there are a few 

 who believe in this homing instinct. Watson's recent 

 experiments^ which seem to demonstrate that terns are 

 guided by a homing instinct will, no doubt, cause some to 

 feel that this same interpretation may be made of the 

 homing of insects. This is not the place to discuss the 

 validity of Watson's experiments but birds and insects 

 are morphologically so unlike that what is true in one 

 case is not necessarily so in the other. 



Fig. 1. Experiment on 

 the homing of ants. I* P 

 porcli, L leaf, N opening to 

 nest. The arrows point in 

 the direction the ant 

 moved. 



In the south many frame houses are supported on nar- 

 row brick pillars. Within the base-board of the porch of 

 such a building a species of wood-boring ant had estab- 

 lished its home. The entrance of this nest was within 

 a foot of one of those supporting pillars. To the ants 

 that brick pillar was an unexplored territory; weeks of 

 watchful waiting failed to detect a single ant upon it.' 



* Watson, John B. The Behavior of the Noddy and Sooty Terns. 

 Publication iOS, Carnegie Institution of Washington; pp. 187-225. 



a Turner, C. H. The Homing of Ants. Jour, of Camp. Seur. and 

 Psurhology, 1907. pp. 381-382. 



