206 a General Notes. [February, 
freed, fifty-four ants found the honey in half an hour. Other days 
of experiment resulted in the same manner. Thus it became evi- 
dent that, if the imprisoned ants made sounds inaudible to us, 
those sounds had no meaning to their companions. A sensitive 
flame was not affected by anything the ants did, and a microphone, 
though it made their footsteps audible, gave no indication of any 
other sound. Remembering, however, that all vibrations be- 
tween 35,000 per second, the highest perceived by the human ear, 
and 470,000,000 per second, which produce the sensation of red 
light, are only perceived by us as heat; and mindful also of the 
curious sense organs present upon the antenna, Sir John Lubbock 
is still of opinion that ants have a sense cognate to what we call 
hearing. These antennal organs are of two kinds, one of which 
occurs in other insects, but the other seems to be peculiar to ants. 
The latter consist of an exterior and interior chamber, connected 
by a long narrow tube. A nerve ends in the interior chamber. 
The whole apparatus resembles a stethoscope, and Professor 
Tyndall and Sir J. Lubbock are of opinion that it serves for a 
similar purpose. Besides a group of these in the terminal segment 
of. the antennz, there are one or two in each succeeding segment. 
Moreover, ants have an apparatus consisting of several serrated 
ridges at the junction of some of the abdominal segments, and 
similar to an organ which in Mutilla europea produces sounds 
audible to us. The inference is, that since Mutilla is not very 
distantly related to the ants, the apparatus possessed by the latter 
serves a purpose similar to that possessed by the former. 
Experiments made upon the sense of smell showed that ants 
ear very sensitive to odors that produce the sensation of scent 
in us. 
PsycHICAL ResEARCH’.—The Proceedings of the Society for 
Psychical Research are certainly remarkable amongst the litera- 
ture of the present century and, rightly considered, are amongst 
the most interesting. The reports of the various committees are 
published primarily for the edification of the members, but they 
also court public criticism, and as a simple matter of fact they 
are worthy of all attention. It has been known for a long time 
that certain phenomena do occur amongst a certain class of per- 
sons which are, to say the least, inexplicable, for though it may 
be urged that collusion and connivance, conjuring and deceit, 
may be practiced occasionally, there is now a mass of trustworthy 
evidence demonstrating the truth of the hypothesis that thoughts 
are transferred from one person to another. 
It must be conceded that until we can fully explain the mech- 
anism of thought as found in any individual, that we have no 
right to say that it is impossible for one person to transfer his 
1 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. d ul. 
London, Triibner & Co, T ch, Yol, 1, Parts 1 an 
VPRO m o g a 
