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AMONG THE NUTS. 119 
and yet take no apparent notice because the circum- 
stances are not interesting, and the experiment is to 
“them unintelligible. Fishes in particular have been often, 
I think, erroneously judged in this way, and have been 
considered deaf, and to have little intelligence, while in 
truth the fact is we have not discovered a way of com- 
municating with them any more than they have found 
a way of talking with us. Fishes, I know, are keener of 
sight than I am when they are interested, and I believe 
they can hear equally well, and are not by any means 
without mind. These ants that acted so foolishly to 
appearance may have been influenced by some former 
experience of which we know nothing; there may be 
something in the past history of the ant which may lead 
them to profoundly suspect interference with their path 
as indicative of extreme danger. Once, perhaps, many 
ant-generations ago, there was some creature which acted 
thus in order to destroy them. This, of course, is merely 
an illustration put forward to suggest the idea that there 
may be a reason in the brain of the ant of which we 
know nothing. I do not know that I myself am any 
more rational, for looking back along the path of life 
I can see now how I turned and twisted and went to 
the right and the left in the most crooked manner, putting 
myself to endless trouble, when by taking one single 
step straight forward in the right direction, if I had only 
known, I might have arrived at once at the goal. Can 
any of us look beyond the little ridge of one day and 
see what will happen the day after? Some hours after- 
wards, towards evening, I found the ants were beginning 
to get over their difficulty. On one side an ant would 
go forward in a half-circle, on the other another ant 
would advance sideways, and meeting together they 
would touch their antennz, and then the first would 
