= a a a 
EEUE I IDEE eee ARON 
1885.] Psychology. 205 
matism, get down to the cars, has in some way managed to train 
a younger dog to do his work. Edward Osborne, residing below 
Naugatuck, has a dog who regularly meets the early morning 
train. The house is a mile away from the railroad, and the dog 
never leaves on his errand until he hears the train whistle at Bea- 
con Falls station. Then he starts on a run and waits at the same 
spot always, with his nose poked between the palings of a fence 
and his keen eyes watching for the flying paper. A story is told 
of one dog that was first taught to bring a certain New Haven 
paper, and when his master changed to another could not be in- 
duced to carry the new one. This is unlikely. Another story is 
that the late Senator William Brown, of Waterbury, had a pet dog 
that could readily distinguish the whistles of the New England 
engines from those of the Naugatuck, though running on a par- 
allel track at the same time side by side. The faithful dog always 
found his train and car, and stood in waiting for the Hartford 
Times, which he carried home to his master for many years.— 
Hartford (Conn.) Times. 
HEARING AND SMELL IN Ants.’—In the investigation of the 
senses of the lower animals, especially of invertebrates, the best 
efforts of the student are often rendered inconclusive from the fact 
that, for aught we know, the sense-organs possessed by them may 
respond to vibrations which produce no effect upon us, and thus 
they may possess senses of which we have no idea, though they 
may lack what we can identify as hearing, taste, or smell. So long. 
as a creature possesses eyes, we feel sure that it sees, though we 
may know that its perceptions are very limited; but it will not do 
to say that an animal cannot hear, only because it cannot hear 
sounds audible to us. For this reason Sir J. Lubbock carefully 
guards himself from the assertion that ants cannot hear; although 
all attempts to induce them to take notice of sounds audible to 
us proved failures. Not content with trying the most intense and 
the most acute sounds upon a colony of ants, and also upon single 
ants, he endeavored to ascertain whether ants could produce sounds 
intelligible to themselves, though inaudible to us. To this end 
placed some honey upon one of six small pillars of wood set 
upon a board frequented by the members of a domesticated colony 
of Lasius flavus. Three ants were placed at the honey, and then 
imprisoned near it; then three others, which were also imprisoned. 
Numerous ants were moving round the board in search of food. 
and Sir J. Lubbock reasoned that if ants can make any sound in- 
telligible to other ants, the imprisoned ants would tell the search- 
ers of the food. On the first occasion only seven ants found the 
honey in three hours—no more than visited the pillars which had 
no honey. But when the ants which had eaten the honey were 
1 Résumé from the Revue Scientifique, of an extract from the work of Sir J. Lub- 
bock, entitled Ants, Wasps and Bees, Experimental studies on the organism and 
_ habits of hymenopterous insects. 
