No. 418.] NESTS OF AMERICAN ANTS. 809 
that I cannot adopt either his psychological definitions or his 
psychogenetic reservations. 
Wasmann seems to me unduly to expand the conception of 
instinct in one direction, while circumscribing it rather too 
narrowly in another. It is true that he distinguishes instinct 
sensu stricto, the equivalent of the term as employed by many 
comparative psychologists to designate the purposeful, auto- 
matic, or stereotyped hereditary activities which are performed 
prior to all experience and without awareness of their object, 
and instinct sensu lato, which embraces also the activities 
depending on the sense-experience of the individual, and all 
that this implies, — adaptation and choice, associative memory, 
etc., — activities which have come to be very generally desig- 
nated as “intelligent.” But he does not appear to regard 
these differences as sufficiently important to merit sharp dis- 
tinction. Indeed, he even attempts (99, p. 12 et seg.) to show 
that the presence of an element of experience in the associative 
process of an animal is not of sufficient moment to merit dis- 
tinction from purely hereditary associations. This, I believe, 
few psychologists will admit. The detection of such a differ- 
ence, however difficult it may be in practice, is surely not 
beyond the possibility of carefully devised experimentation and 
induction. And theoretically the two kinds of activity should 
certainly be distinguished and separately designated. Was- 
mann traces the non-stereotyped activities depending on choice 
to a “sinnliches Erkenntniss- und Begehrungsvermógen," which 
he regards as being the distinguishing trait of instinct. Thus 
he comes to include under instinct both the instinct and intel- 
ligence of other authors. I believe with Emery (93, '98) and 
Bethe (98) that Wasmann has overshot the mark and attempted 
to include too much in his conception of instinct. I should 
continue, therefore, to emphasize the difference between activi- 
ties which are compelled by inherited mechanism and those 
Which imply choice on the part of the individual organism. 
For the latter the term “ intelligence ” has been so very gener- 
ally used that it seems both hopeless and idle to try to restrict 
it, as Wasmann so emphatically desires, to the ratiocinative 
Process in its clearest manifestations. 
