422 



INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



nicate and receive information, which, in whatever way ef- 

 fected, would be impracticable if they were devoid of reason. 

 Under this head it is only necessary to refer you to the 

 endless facts in proof, furnished by almost every page of my 

 letters on the history of ants and of the hive-bee. I shall 

 therefore but detain you for a moment with an additional 

 anecdote or two, especially with one respecting the former 

 tribe, which is valuable from the celebrity of the relater. 



Dr. Franklin was of opinion that ants could communicate 

 their ideas to each other ; in proof of which he related to 

 Kalm the Swedish traveller the following fact. Having 

 placed a pot containing treacle in a closet infested with ants, 

 these insects found their way into it, and were feasting very 

 heartily when he discovered them. He then shook them out, 

 and suspended the pot by a string from the ceiling. By 

 chance one ant remained, which, after eating its fill, with some 

 difficulty found its way up the string, and thence reaching 

 the ceiling, escaped by the wall to its nest. In less than half 

 an hour a great company of ants sallied out of their hole, 

 climbed the ceiling, crept along the string into the pot, and 

 began to eat again. This they continued until the treacle 

 was all consumed, one swarm running up the string while 

 another passed down. 1 It seems indisputable that the one 

 ant had in this instance conveyed news of the booty to his 

 comrades, who would not otherwise have at once directed 

 their steps in a body to the only accessible route. 



A German artist, a man of strict veracity, states that in 

 his journey through Italy he was an eyewitness to the fol- 

 lowing occurrence. He observed a species of Scarabaeus 

 (Ateuclius pilularius f) busily engaged in making, for the re- 

 ception of its egg, a pellet of dung, which when finished it 

 rolled to the summit of a small hillock, and repeatedly suf- 

 fered to tumble down its side, apparently for the sake of 

 consolidating it by the earth which each time adhered to it. 

 During this process the pellet unluckily fell into an adjoining 

 hole, out of which all the efforts of the beetle to extricate it 

 were in vain. After several ineffectual trials, the insect re- 



1 Kalm's Travels in North America, i. 239. 



