154 STATEMENTS OF PREVIOUS AUTHORS. 
These statements are most interesting; and it is 
much to be regretted that he has not given us in detail 
the evidence on which they rest. In another passage, 
indeed, he himself says,! ‘If they have a language, I 
cannot give too many proofs of it.’ Unfortunately, 
however, the chapter which he devotes to this impor- 
tant subject is very.short, and occupied with general 
statements rather than with the accounts of the par- 
ticular, experiments and observations on which those 
statements rest. Nor is there any serious attempt to 
ascertain the nature, character, and capabilities of this 
antennal language. Even if by motions of these organs 
Ants and Bees can caress, can express love, fear, anger, 
&c., it does not follow that they can narrate facts or 
describe localities. 
The facts recorded by Kirby and Spence are not 
more explicit. It is therefore disappointing to read in 
the chapter especially devoted to this subject, that, as 
regards the power possessed by Ants and Bees to com- 
municate and receive information, ‘ it is only necessary > 
to refer you to the endless facts in proof, furnished by 
almost every page of my letters on the history of Ants 
and of the Hive Bee. I shall therefore but detain you 
for a moment with an additional anecdote or two, 
especially with one respecting the former tribe, which 
is valuable from the celebrity of the narrator.’ 
The first of these anecdotes refers to a Beetle 
(Ateuchus pilularius) which, having made for the 
Loe. cit. p. 206. 
