ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 133 



gathering together may well be in the case of the discovery 

 of a food supply as in the incidents mentioned above. 

 Lubbock (loc. cit.) noticed how an ant, which had found such 

 a treasure, brought some of its friends, and how these 

 informed others, and so on ; but all kinds did not behave in 

 this fashion, and some (such as specimens of F. fused) only 

 sought the food for their own consumption all day long. 

 The latter the more resemble us men, who generally keep as 

 secret as possible discoveries of places of food supply ! The 

 same observer was able to place it beyond doubt, by many 

 ingenious experiments, that, as maintained above, their com- 

 munications are not only of a general kind, but can deal 

 with quite concrete things and directions ; for instance, that 

 a place with many larvse will, in pursuance of the invitation 

 of the ant-guide, be sought by a larger number of ants than 

 will one with few. Thus planned deceptions have been 

 shattered by the wisdom of these little creatures. The author 

 is indebted to the already mentioned and excellent letters of 

 Dr. Ellendorf , of Wiedenbruck, for many interesting obser- 

 vations on the power of communication among ants. Dr. 

 Ellendorf writes : 



" I lived for a long time on the island of Omotepe in the 

 lake of Nicaragua and had there an opportunity of watching 

 these little creatures daily and hourly under compulsion, 

 for they were inmates of my house. I had scarcely built 

 my rancho when they were to be found therein, at first 

 singly, then more and more, busily hunting over every 

 corner. It was soon plain to me how fully they possessed 

 the power of communicating with each other. I had hung 

 the skin of a bird out to dry, and the next morning I only 

 found a little heap of feathers on the ground. About 180 

 yards off I found the nest of the ants which had destroyed 

 the skin, and which had clearly been summoned by a com- 

 rade which had discovered the skin and the way to it. In 

 order to watch this proceeding more closely I fastened near 

 my table a stick with a cross piece, and hung a dead bird 

 from it by a string. Before long I saw an ant run down the 

 string to the corpse. It walked deliberately over it, stood 

 still here and there, and carefully tried it all round with its 

 feelers. After thus busying itself for perhaps a minute, it 

 ran up the string again and down the stick to the floor. As 

 soon as it reached the ground it ran quickly about as though 



