294 



NATURE 



[July 26, 1883 



warmth which accompanies it, and that in the same way 

 they are attracted by the light of a candle placed close to 

 the sides of the formiairium ; the glass being warmed 

 and becoming a source of radiant heat. The elaborate 

 experiments of Sir John Lubbock, showing that ants pre- 

 ferred the red end of the spectrum and avoided the violet 

 end, are all explained by their preference for the greater 

 warmth accompanying the red rays, though he also thinks 

 they dislike the effect of the chemical rays. His general 

 conclusion is, that there is no evidence that they dis- 

 tinguish colour or prefer one colour to another, but that 

 they always prefer warmth, and dislike the action of the 

 chemical rays of light, while to light itself they have no 

 objection whatever. 



Mr. White reproduces from the Proceedings of the 

 Linnean Society for 1861 a remarkable account of some 

 Australian ants burying their dead in a methodical 

 manner strongly resembling our funerals, and supports it 

 by some curious observations of his own. In one of his 

 newly procured nests there were many dead ants, which 

 were carried up from below and placed against the glass. 

 Three small card trays containing honey for the ants 

 were placed in theformicarz'um, but instead of eat.ng the 

 honey the trays were used as cemeteries, and in two days 

 140 dead ants were placed in one tray and 180 in each of 

 the others. In another case he observed the ants burying 

 the dead in subterranean cemeteries, the bodies being 

 covered with earth and the passage leading to the vault 

 being stopped up. 



A good account is given of the various creatures found 

 in ants' nests, such as the crustacean Platyarthrus 

 Hqffmanseggii, the various species of beetles, some of 

 which are never found elsewhere, and seem to depend on 

 the ants for their subsistence, and the aphides which the 

 ants actually breed for their own use just as we do cattle. 

 Some ants have small colonies of other ants domiciled 

 with them, apparently as guests or lodgers, while others 

 capture the pupa; of distinct species and bring them up 

 to work for them like veritable slaves. This extraordinary 

 habit of slave-making is fully described in two very in- 

 teresting chapters, and Mr. White is one of the few 

 Englishmen who have been so fortunate as to witness the 

 slave-hunters at their work. 



We cannot better illustrate our author's style and his 

 mode of viewing the subject of ant-economy than by 

 quoting the passage in which he sums up the result of his 

 observations and inquiries : — 



"And now, surely enough has been said, ample evi- 

 dence has been brought forward, my own personal testi- 

 mony having been confirmed when necessary by the 

 experience of others, to warrant me in earnestly demand- 

 ing for my little clients a favourable verdict. When you 

 bear in mind the self-devotion of the queen for the 

 commonwealth ; the loyalty of her subjects, their affection 

 towards their youthful charges, preserving as they do 

 a happy medium between undue severity and over- 

 indulgence ; their liberal system of education without the 

 aid of privy councils and revised codes ; their plan of 

 drainage, most effectual before boards of health and city 

 corporations had ever been heard of ; their public works 

 and national enterprises, planned and executed with the 

 most surprising promptitude, uncontrolled by parlia- 

 mentary committees, orders in council, and circumlocu- 

 tion offices ; their social institutions, their provident clubs 

 and savings banks, gathering as they do their meat in the 



summer — the continental and foreign ants grain and 

 honey, the British ants their aphides for future use ; 

 when you bear in mind their perseverance under diffi- 

 culties, that no poor-house or assessment committee or 

 sanitary authorities are needed, for all live as brethren, 

 all sympathise with each other in trouble and difficulty, and 

 share everything in common as members of the same 

 happy family, ' he that gathers much having nothing over, 

 and he that gathers little having no lack ; ' when you 

 remember their habits of early rising, of cleanliness, of 

 moderation, of economy, of temperance, their love of 

 fresh air, their skill and industry in their many trades, 

 the magnificent scale on which they construct their 

 houses ; their language, which, though more difficult to 

 acquire than Chinese, yet is to them so intelligible that 

 there are no misunderstandings, all speaking it fluently, 

 and by means of its mysterious agency communicating 

 their ideas to each other ; when you recall how they 

 carry out concerted plans thoroughly, noiselessly, unin- 

 terruptedly, not resting till their work be finished, 

 animated by one spirit, pursuing thus the end, fulfilling 

 thus the law of their brief existence — you must allow that 

 surely this 'little people' are 'exceeding wise.'" 



Though somewhat anthropomorphic and highly coloured, 

 this passage brings before us in a striking manner the 

 many marvellous characteristics of the habits and in- 

 stincts of ants, and also serves to show the thorough and 

 enthusiastic study which the writer has bestowed upon 

 them. 



The book is well illustrated with numerous woodcuts 

 from original drawings ; and in an appendix is given a 

 complete list of British ants with careful descriptions of 

 all the species, forty-one in number. It will therefore be 

 of great assistance to any entomologist wishing to com- 

 mence the study of our native ants ; while as an interest- 

 ing volume for the general reader, or as a gift-book for 

 children with a taste for natural history, it may be safely 

 recommended as among the very best of its kind. 



Alfred R. Wallace 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken 0/ anonymous communications. 



[ The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible otherwise to insure the appearance even 

 of communications containing interesting and novel facts.} 



The Matter of Space 



In his letter on this subject in Nature (vol. xxviii. p. 148), 

 Prof. Morris strikes, I believe, a keynote of very great interest 

 in the general theory of motion, when he lays it down as a 

 primary principle that all motion naturally tends to attain a con- 

 dition of stationariness in which, though it still constantly springs 

 or swings hither and thither, it is yet permanently localised in 

 some fixed field, contained within definite inclosing boundaries. 



.Singular as the law appears that motions, bound and hemmed 

 in as we see them everywhere around us, are only ostensibly 

 confined to their spheres by combinations of directed forces, 

 while they are really inclosed in them by a governing principle in 

 matter which constantly models its directed courses either by 

 conliuuous or by interrupted stages into forms of stationariness ; 

 and strange as the statement sounds, that all matter thus tends 

 constantly to form in situ veritable universes 1 externally re- 



1 A pamphlet. "The L^niverse, or the Science of the Twentieth Century," 

 maintaining exactly this microcosmical theory ^by what course of reasoning 

 arrived at I cannot guess), reached me not long ago from a writer, Mr. John 

 Tate of Portadown, in Ireland, with another ("A New Theory of Electri- 

 city,") descr.bing electricity as a kind of twisting power, both of which, from 

 the independent practicality of their treatment, seem to have been entirely 

 promptedand suggested to the author by exact meditative study and by 

 clear original reflections. 



