102 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [lect. 



— their object being to destroy the foe, not to save their 

 friend. 



To test the affection of ants for one another, I have 

 made a number of experiments, from which I will extract 

 a few, as specimens of the whole. Thus, January 3, 

 1876, I immersed an ant (F. nigra) in water for half 

 an hour, and when she was then, to all appearance, 

 drowned, I put her on a strip of paper, leading to some 

 food. The strip was half an inch wide, and one of my 

 marked ants belonging to the same nest was passing 

 continually to and fro over it. The immersed ant lay 

 there an hour before she recovered herself, and during 

 this time the marked ant passed by eighteen times 

 without taking the slightest notice of her. 



I then immersed another ant in water for an hour, 

 after which I placed her on the strip of paper, as in the 

 preceding case. She was three-quarters of an hour 

 before she recovered ; during this time two marked ants 

 were passing to and fro ; one of them went by eighteen 

 times, the other twenty times, two other ants also 

 went over the paper, but none of them took the slightest 

 notice of their half- drowned friend. 



As evidence both of their intelligence and of their affec- 

 tion for their friends, it has been said by various observers 

 that when ants have been accidentally buried, they have 

 been very soon dug out and rescued by their com- 

 panions. Without for a moment doubting the facts as 

 stated, we must remember the habit which ants have of 

 burrowing in loose fresh soil, and especially their prac- 

 tice of digging out fresh galleries, when their nests are 

 disturbed. It seemed to me, however, that it would not 

 be difficult to test whether the excavations made by ants 



