ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 165 



is willingly given in the way already described. According 

 to Forel, mutual feeding is a sure sign of friendship. The 

 same is true of mutual carrying, which is sometimes practised, 

 in order to show the friend a new road or place, sometimes 

 to obtain help for a given work at a certain spot. On a 

 change of dwelling those which know the way carry those 

 which do not know it,- and workers which are weary with a 

 long journey are also carried by their companions. It 

 sometimes happens that a conquered enemy is seized by the 

 victor and carried or pulled as a prisoner into the nest, but 

 this can be recognised by the particular way of carrying. 

 There is also very different behavior in the two cases if 

 the pair are forcibly separated, in the one friendly recog- 

 nition on meeting again, in the other flight or renewed strife. 

 Also the carrying of enemies is rare, while that of friends 

 is a very frequent occurrence. 



If friendly ants are put together in a box they quickly 

 recognise each other, and carry, feed, and lick each other ; 

 if they are hostile they fall on or avoid one another. 



"W. M. R. ("Nature," 1879, No. 4) put some little 

 flasks covered with muslin, some containing friendly or 

 related, and the others hostile or stranger ants, before the 

 nests of various species (F. ftisca, P. rufescens, etc.). The 

 former were each time left quite undisturbed and unnoticed, 

 while the latter were immediately attacked. They tried to 

 bite through the muslin, and as they could not succeed in 

 doing this they set sentinels in front of the hostile camp. At 

 last the muslin was bitten through, and the imprisoned ants 

 would soon have been killed if the observer had not taken 

 them away. W. M. R. considered that this experiment proved 

 that the feeling of hatred was stronger among these remark- 

 able creatures than that of love. An exactly similar 

 observation was made by Sir John Lubbock (loc. cz.), and 

 he found the animals he was experimenting on bit through 

 the muslin and killed those inside. If one of the latter 

 stretched a leg outside it was at once laid hold of, and the 

 enemy tried to pull it through. The same observer came to 

 the conclusion that his experiments proved that individual 

 friendships were to be found among ants. Some have very 

 many, others few, others again, as it seems, no friends. 

 Specimens of F. fusca, for example, never brought friends 

 to a foodstore they had discovered, while all others did. 



