No. 418.] NESTS OF AMERICAN ANTS. 813 
quite unnecessary to assume the existence of anything beyond 
instinct and simple intelligence in the ants which form com- 
pound and mixed nests. I should even be inclined to place 
a more moderate estimate than Wasmann on the psychical 
endowments of these animals. The manifestations of intelli- 
gence are very feeble, as any observer who tries to free himself 
from anthropomorphism will surely find. There are distinct 
traces of associations with indications of some permanence of 
these associations, or what might be called animal memory as 
restricted in its meaning by Thorndike ('98, pp. 98, 99). Imita- 
tion is clearly manifested, but in a form which does not neces- 
sarily imply the existence of consciousness. There is a certain 
ability to profit by experience, and considerable power of 
adaptation to new circumstances, both remarkably developed 
as compared with these powers in other insects. There is 
evidence of choice and of that which it necessarily presupposes, 
viz., will, but there are no evidences of anything resembling 
abstract thought, cognition, or ratiocination as manifested in 
man. Nor are there the slightest grounds for postulating the 
existence of these powers, which would be a hindrance rather 
than a help in the activities of ants under existing conditions. 
Having arrived at the same conclusion as Wasmann that 
there are no evidences of ratiocination in ants we have reached 
the limits of our brief inquiry. This conclusion, however, 
even if it be extended so as to exclude all animals except man 
from a participation in this faculty, does not imply the admis- 
sion of a qualitative difference between the human and animal 
psyche, as understood by Wasmann. Surely the sciences of 
comparative physiology, anatomy, and embryology, not to men- 
tion paleontology, distribution, and taxonomy, must have vm 
cultivated to little purpose during the nineteenth century if we 
are to rest satisfed with the scholastic definition of ratiocina- 
tion as an adequate and final verity. And surely no one who 
is conversant with modern biological science will accept the 
views that the power of abstract, ratiocinative thought, which 
is absent in infants and young children, scarcely developed in 
Savages and highly developed and generally manifested only in 
the minority of civilized men, has miraculously sprung into 
