STB JOHN LUBBOCK ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. 



Fig. 5. 



243 





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Diagram of complex path traversed in experiment 5. 



A, first position of pencil. B, second position of pencil. 1, 2, straight lines 

 of two tracks of the observed ant. 3, winding narrow white line, showing course 

 pursued by the same ant before arriving at B, when the position of the pencil 

 was unchanged. 



removed but a short distance to the right or left, the ants on 

 their journey to the shifted object travelled very often backwards 

 and forwards and around the spot where the coveted object first 

 stood. Then they would retrace their steps towards the nest, 

 wander hither and thither from side to side between the nest 

 and the point A, and only after very repeated efforts around the 

 original site of the larvae reach, as it were, accidentally the .object 

 desired at B. 



Another evidence of this consists in the fact that if when Z. 

 niffer were carrying off larvse placed in a cup on a piece of board, 

 I turned the board round so that the side which had been turned 

 towards the nest was away from it, and vice versa, the ants always 

 returned over the same track on the board, and, in consequence, 

 directly away from home. 



If I moved the board to the other side of my artificial nest, the 



