112 PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
drunk as to come under the rank of incapables. The sober individuals 
appear exceedingly puzzled at finding their friends in such a condition. 
As a rule, they picked them up and carried them to the nest, whilst strangers 
they threw into the water and drowned. In some instances, however, 
confusion ensued, for a few of the strangers were carried to the nest and 
friends were thrown into the water; but they did not return to the rescue of 
their friends, and occasionally they discovered the strangers in the nest and 
turned them out. Other interesting experiments were made to test the 
ants’ recollection of friends, and Sir John expresses surprise that the ants of 
an entire nest evidently recognise and know each other. Even after a year’s 
separation, old companions are recognised and amicably received, whereas 
strangers almost invariably are attacked and maltreated, even when intro- 
duced in the mixed company of old friends. There is a difference in this 
respect, however, among species; for while Lasius flavus behaves as above 
mentioned, Formica fusca shows a milder and much more courteous de- 
meanour towards neighbours and strangers. In certain kinds of ants sight 
does not seem to be a very acute sense, inasmuch as the subjoined repeated 
experiments prove :—TF ood was placed a few inches from the nest on a glass 
slip, the straight road to and from which marked ants soon learned, but when 
the food had been shifted only a short distance from its first position, the 
same ants kept meandering in an extraordinary circuitous path from several 
minutes to half an hour before finding out the exact route from food to nest, 
and vice versa. A diagrammatic chart of the path pursued appeared as one 
mass of confused and intricate cross lines. Slavery in certain genera is 
a positive institution, the Amazon ants (Polyergus rufescens) absolutely 
requiring a slave assistant to clean, dress and feed them. Repeated and 
varied experiments go to prove that they will rather die than help themselves. 
There are also parasite attendants on the ants, the curious blind wood-louse 
(Platyarthrus Hoffmanseggit) being common in nests ; but the ants pay little 
attention to them, and when migrating leave these scavengers behind. 
Certain Diptera of the family Thorid@ are also parasitic on ants, Sir John 
having discovered some new species, the recently described Thora formi- 
carum and Platyphora Lubbocki of Mr. G. H. Verrall. 
A paper “ On the Aspects of the Vegetation of Rodriguez” was read by 
Dr. I. Bailey Balfour, B.M., who, as Botanist, accompanied the Transit of 
Venus Expedition to that island in 1874. It seems that, like the Fauna, 
the Flora of Rodriguez has undergone very considerable changes, through 
human, subsidiary and local influences. 
“The Fungi of the ‘ Challenger’ Expedition” (third notice), by the Rev. 
M. J. Berkely, and “ Tropical Ferns,” by Prof. Harrington, U.S., were the 
titles of two other botanical communications which were taken as read. 
