11 



about five minutes they reappeared, followed by others. All fell 

 into rank, walking regularly and slowly two by two, until they 

 arrived at the spot where lay the dead bodies of the soldier ants. 

 In a few minutes two of the ants advanced and took up the dead 

 body of one of their comrades, then two others, and so on, until all 

 were ready to march. First walked two ants bearing a body, then 

 two without a burden ; then two others with another dead ant, and 

 so on until the line extended to about forty pairs, and the procession 

 now moved slowly onwards followed by an irregular body of about 

 200 ants. Occasionally the two laden ants stopped, and laying 

 down the dead ant it was taken up by the two walking unburdened 

 behind them, and thus, by occasionally relieving each other, they 

 arrived at a sandy spot near the sea. The body of ants now com- 

 menced digging, with their jaws, a number of holes in the ground, 

 into each of which a dead ant was laid, where they now laboured on 

 until they had filled up the ants' graves. This did not quite finish 

 the remarkable circumstances attending these obsequies. Some six 

 or seven of the ants had meanly attempted to run off without per- 

 forming their share of the task of digging, these were caught and 

 brought back, when they were attacked by the whole body of the 

 ants and killed upon the spot. A single grave was then roughly 

 dug for the whole of the malefactors and they were indiscriminately 

 dropped into it. You observe the brave warriors were respectfully 

 deposited in separate graves, while the guilty ants were promptly 

 executed and thrown into one common unhallowed grave ! Ants 

 have been seen to bridge over a small rill by pushing a thin twig 

 across it, and when this was found too narrow for the transit of the 

 main body, a number of ants ran along the edges of the twig and 

 adhered to the sides, until it was sufficiently broad for the main 

 body to cross conveniently. On another occasion when passing 

 over a bank of crumbling sand which afforded no stable footing, a 

 number of them adhered together and formed a firm gangway for 

 their companions to pass over. Svich acts as these argue a degree 

 of instinct which may almost be called reason. And yet on the 

 other hand we have Sir John Lubbock's careful and repeated 

 experiments, in which he invariably found that if he moved the 

 coveted store of honey or larvae even a couple of inches from its 

 previous position, the ants were quite unable to find it, and wandered 

 aimlessly about for hours, until they stumbled upon it at last quite 

 accidentally. He took the trouble to trace out some of these devious 

 wanderings with the sharp point of a lead pencil, and the resulting 

 diagrams are confused mazes of intersecting lines, meandermg 

 about without end or aim. With all this conflicting evidence before 

 us, I think the only conclusion we can come to is, that placed in 

 certain definite and natural circumstances, the inherited and trans- 



