104 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [lect. 



So far as the above ants, however, are concerned, this 

 cannot be urged. I may add that I repeated the same 

 experiment several times, in some cases with another 

 species, Myrmica ruginodis, and always with the same 

 results. 



I then tried the following experiment. A number of 

 the small yellow ants (L. flavus) were out feeding on 

 some honey. I took five of them, and also five others 

 of the same species, but from a different nest, chloro- 

 formed them, and put them close to the honey, and on 

 the path which the ants took in going to and from the 

 nest, so that these could not but see them. The glass on 

 which the honey was placed was surrounded by a moat 

 of water. This, I thought, would give me an opportunity 

 of testing both how far they would be disposed to assist 

 a fellow-creature, and what difference they would make 

 between their nest companions and strangers from a dif- 

 ferent community of the same species. The chloroformed 

 ants were put down at 10 in the morning. For more 

 than an hour, though many ants came up and touched 

 them with their antennae, none did more. At length 

 one of the strangers was picked up, carried to the edge of 

 the glass, and quietly thrown, or rather dropped, into 

 the water. Shortly afterwards a friend was taken up 

 and treated in the same way. By degrees they were 

 all picked up and thrown into the water. One of the 

 strangers was, indeed, taken into the nest, but in about 

 half an hour she was brought out again and thrown into 

 the water like the rest. I repeated this experiment with 

 fifty ants, half friends and half strangers. In each case 

 twenty out of the twenty -five ants were thrown into the 

 water as described. A few were left lying where they 



