SIR J. LUBBOCK OK ANTS, BEES, AKD WASPS. 179 



As to Hearing and Experiments with Telephone. 



In order to ascertain if possible whether ants made any sounds 

 which were audible to one another, I thought I would try the 

 telephone. Accordingly I looked for two ants' nests (Lasius 

 niger) not far from one another, and then, after disturbing one of 

 them, had a telephone held just over it. I then held the second 

 telephone close over the other nest, each telephone being perhaps 

 one to two inches above the ground. If the disturbed ants made 

 any'sound which was transmitted by the telephone, the ants in the 

 other nest ought have been thrown into confusion. I could not, 

 however, perceive that it made the slightest difference to them. 

 I tried the experiment three or four times, always with the same 

 result. 



I then put some syrup near a nest of L. niger, and when several 

 hundred ants were feeding on the syrup, I blew on the nest, which 

 always disturbs them very much. They came out in large numbers 

 and ran about in great excitement. I then held one end of the 

 telephone over the nest, the other over the feeding ants, who, 

 however, took not the slightest notice. 



I cannot, however, look on these experiments as at all conclu- 

 sive, because it may well be that the plate of the telephone is 

 too stiff to be set in vibration by any sounds which ants could 

 produce. 



On the Sting of Torrnica. 

 M. Dewitz, in an interesting paper published in the Zeitschr. 

 fur wiss. Zool. vol. xxviii., has given an account of the structure 

 and development of the sting in ants*. Formica rufa, and other 

 so-called " stingless " ants, do really possess a sting, although it is 

 but rudimentary, and, indeed, serves only as a support for the 

 duct of the poison-gland. Now under these circumstances a 

 sting might either be rudimentary in the sense of undeveloped, 

 aud the sting might represent a rudimentary and archaic struc- 

 ture from which the more perfect organ of the other ants, as, for 

 instance, of the Myrmicidse, had developed itself ; or, secondly, ifc 



* "Dasder Forniicidenstachel kein verkiinimertes Organ ist, sondern ein auf 

 der niedrigsten Stufe der Entwickelung stehen gebliebenes, aus dem der ausgebil- 

 dete Stachel hervorging, wir es also nicht rnit einem BiicTcschritt sondern mit 

 einem primitivem Organe zu thun haben " (Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche 

 Zoologie, vol. xxviii. p. 551). 



