ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 49 



It occasionally makes a short and quick step, as though 

 driven by an unseen spring, but, like that of an automaton, 

 aimless and objectless. If it is pulled, it makes a movement 

 of avoidance, but falls back into its stupefied condition as 

 soon as it is released. It is no longer capable of action 

 consciously directed to a given object ; it neither tries to 

 escape, nor to attack, nor to go back to its home, nor to 

 rejoin its companions, nor to walk away ; it feels neither 

 heat nor cold, it knows neither fear nor desire for food. It 

 is merely an automatic and reflex machine, and is exactly 

 similar to one of those pigeons, from which Flourens re- 

 moved the hemispheres of the cerebrum. Just in the same 

 way behaves the body of an ant from which the head has 

 been taken away. In the numerous fights between Amazons 

 and other ants, countless cases have been observed of slight 

 injury to the brain, which have caused the most remarkable 

 phenomena. Many of the wounded were seized with a 

 mad rage, and flung themselves at everyone that came in 

 their way, whether friend or foe. Others assumed an 

 appearance of indifference, and walked serenely about in the 

 midst of the fighting. Others exhibited a sudden failure of 

 strength ; but they still recognised their enemies, approached 

 them, and tried to bite them in cold blood, in a way quite 

 foreign to the behavior of healthy ants. They were also 

 often observed to run round and round in a circle, the 

 motion resembling the manege, or riding-school action of 

 mammals, when one of the crura cerebri has been removed. 

 If an ant is cut in half through the thorax, so that the 

 great nerve ganglia of the prothorax remain untouched, 

 the behavior of the head shows that intelligence also remains 

 untouched. Ants mutilated in this way try to go forwards 

 with their two remaining legs, and beg with their antennas 

 for their companions' aid. If one of these latter lets itself be 

 stopped, then we observe a lively interchange of thanks and 

 sympathy expressed by the actively moving antennas. Forel 

 placed near to each other two such mutilated bodies of the 

 F, rufibarbis. They conversed with each other in the above 

 described way, and appeared each to beg for help. But 

 when he put in some similarly mutilated ants of a hostile 

 species, F. sanguined, the picture was changed ; war broke 

 out between these cripples just in the same way and with 

 the same fury as between perfect ants. Mutilated human 



