Pg ea ak a a ee Ce OTe eee eee wn 
1893.] Animal Intelligence. 937 
had been taught to march and counter-march, to dance, to 
feign death, to pull miniature coaches, etc’, etc. While this 
does not’evince voluntary ratiocination, it shows that fleas 
think and are capable of receiving instruction. “When we 
consider the habits of ants, their social relations, their large 
communities, and elaborate habitations, their roadways, their 
possession of domestic animals, and even, in some cases, of 
slaves, it must be admitted that they have a fair claim to rank 
next to man in the scale of intelligence.” 
When Lubbock says that the ant ranks next to man in the 
scale of intelligence he does not err. The superior intelligence 
of the ant has been recognized and commented on by man 
since the very inception of history. The wisest man of his 
day, King Solomon, uses the ant to point a moral. He con- 
siders her intelligence and industry worthy of emulation, and 
says to the sluggard: “Go to the ant, consider her ways and 
be wise." This one factor, intelligence, and the faculty of 
intercommunicating intelligently, makes a colony of ants a 
perfect society. Their social relations make it a model repub- 
lic. Ants are true socialists; communists of an ideal type. 
Their’s is a patriotism sublimely grand in its total self abnega- 
tion. The commonwealth is everything—individual weal is 
not considered. Man is susceptible to individual attachments 
which form the basis of his happiness. The affection of ants, 
on the contrary, is a patriotism that is extended to the whole 
community, “never distinguishing individuals, unless, as in 
the instance of the communal mother, connected with the 
furtherance of the common good.” Ants can undoubtedly 
communicate. A short while ago I crushed a pismire in the 
track usually taken by the members ofa colony inhabiting 
the hollow of a beech tree standing in my yard. A soldier 
ant came along presently and, smelling the blood of his mur- 
dered companion, was seized with a panic terror,and rushed 
away into the nest. He shortly returned with thirteen com- 
panions and made a slow and careful reconnoissance of the 
dead body and its surroundings. Then all of them examined 
*Lubbock: Ants, Bees, and Wasps, p. 1. 
PKirby and Spence: Entomology—* Perfect Society. ” 
