WAYS OF NATURE 
by a chain, might bite the kernels from an ear in 
a mere spirit of mischief and restlessness, as a dog 
or puppy might, and drop them upon the ground; 
a hen would very likely be attracted by them, when * 
the fox would be quick to see his chance. 
Some of the older entomologists believed that in 
a colony of ants and of bees the members recog- 
nized one another by means of some secret sign or 
password. In all cases a stranger from another 
colony is instantly detected, and a home member 
as instantly known. This sign or password, says 
Burmeister, as quoted by Lubbock, “serves to pre- 
vent any strange bee from entering into the same 
hive without being immediately detected and killed. 
It, however, sometimes happens that several hives 
have the same signs, when their several members 
tob each other with impunity. In these cases the 
bees whose hives suffer most alter their signs, and 
then can immediately detect their enemy.” The 
same thing was thought to be true of a colony of 
ants. Others held that the bees and the ants knew 
one another individually, as men of the same town 
do! Would not any serious student of nature in our 
day know in advance of experiment that all this 
was childish and absurd? Lubbock showed by 
numerous experiments that bees and ants did not 
recognize their friends or their enemies by either 
of these methods. Just how they did do it he could 
not clearly settle, though it seems as if they were 
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