EXPERIMENTS WITH BURIED ANTS. 103 
they were intelligently wise in securing a treasure of 
food before they rescued their comrade, who, though 
in confinement, was neither in pain nor danger. So far 
as the above ants, however, are concerned, this cannot, 
I think, be urged. 
(3) On the 8th September I repeated the experi- 
ment, burying someantsat4pP.mM. Up to 6.3 no attempt 
had been made to release them. I let them out and 
buried some more. The next morning, at 7 a.M., the 
honey was all gone, some ants were still wandering about, 
but no notice bad been taken of the captives, whom I 
then liberated. 
(4) I then (August 21) made exactly the same 
experiment with Myrmica ruginodis, as representing 
the other great family of ants. 
In order to test the affection of ants belonging to 
the same nest for one another I tried the following 
experiments. I took six ants from a nest of F. 
fusca, imprisoned them in a small bottle, one end of 
which was covered with a layer of muslin. J then put 
the muslin close to the door of the nest. The muslin 
was of open texture, the meshes, however, being 
sufficiently small to prevent the ants from escaping. 
They could not only, however, see one another, but 
communicate freely with their antenne. We now 
watched to see whether the prisoners would be tended 
or fed by their friends. We could not, however, 
observe that the least notice was taken of them. The 
experiment, nevertheless, was less conclusive than 
