INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOUR IN INSECTS 128 
upon the activities of their after-life than the feeding of our 
grubs has on the duties of ant-life. And although we must 
remember,” he might continue, “that these large animals do 
not have the advantage which we possess of awaking suddenly, 
as by a new birth, to their full faculties, still, as they grow 
older, now one and now another of their deferred instincts is 
unfolded and manifested. They fall into the routine of life 
with little or no training as the period proper to the various 
instincts arrives. If learning thereof there be, it has at 
present escaped our observation. And such intelligence as 
their activities evince (and many of them do show remarkable 
adaptation to uniform conditions of life) would seem to be 
rather ancestral than of the present time ; as is shown by the 
fact that many of the adaptations are directed rather to past 
conditions of life than to those which now hold good. In the 
presence of new emergencies to which their instincts have not 
fitted them, these poor men are often completely at a loss. 
We cannot but conclude, therefore, that, although shown under 
somewhat different and less favourable conditions, instinct 
occupies fully as large a space in the psychology of man as it 
does in that of the ant, while their intelligence is far less 
unerring and, therefore, markedly inferior to our own.” 
Of course, the views here attributed to the ant are very 
absurd. But are they much more absurd than the views of 
those who, on the evidence which we at present possess, 
attribute all the varied activities of ant-life to instinct ? Take 
the case of the ecitons, or military ants, or, the harvesting ants, 
or the ants that are said to keep draught-bugs as beasts of 
burden : have we sufficient evidence to enable us to affirm 
that these modes of behaviour are purely instinctive and not 
intelligent ; that all the varied manceuvres of the military 
ants, for example, are displayed to the full without any learn- 
ing or imitation, without teaching and without intelligence on 
the part of every individual in the army. 
That in some cases there is something very like a training 
or education of the ant when it emerges from the pupa con- 
dition is rendered probable by the observations of M. Forel. 
