The Ants 



bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to 

 take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up into the air by main force, 

 and starts; not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not 

 calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of 

 his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going 

 around it, he climbs over it backwards dragging his booty after 

 him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, 

 kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his prop- 

 erty viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of 

 him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him a moment, gets 

 madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing 

 away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never 

 occurs to him to go around it, he must climb it; and he does 

 climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top — which is 

 as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of 

 flour from Heidelburg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; 

 when he gets up there he finds that is not the place; takes a cur- 

 sory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or 

 tumbles down, and starts off once more — as usual in a new di- 

 rection. At the end of half an hour he fetches up within six 

 inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down * * *." 

 After continuing this charmingly aimless work for some time and 

 meeting another ant and fighting him about nothing, ''each starts 

 off in a different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or some- 

 thing else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the 

 same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it." 



Wasmann has just published some important observations in 

 which he shows that ants of the genus Lasius appear to deter- 

 mine direction only by paths previously traveled by members 

 of the same community and which they distinguish by the 

 sense of smell located in the antennae, but that certain ants of the 

 genus Formica proceed directly to the desired point without fol- 

 lowing paths, using apparently sight as the directing influence. 

 Some little understood sense of orientation, however, may lead to 

 this result and such a sense of course would be instinctive. 



The community life of ants seems almost perfect. It has been 

 likened to a perfect republic where each works for the good of 

 the whole community, each having his appointed work, laboring 

 constantly for the good of all, and each ready to sacrifice himself 

 for the good of all. Most of the writings on the habits of ants 



42 



