SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
223 
posed to question the general good qualities of his favourites. In fact, ants 
of the same nest never quarrel among themselves ; he had never seen any 
evidence of ill-temper in any of his nests. All is harmony. He had already 
in previous papers given various instances of tender kindness. Again, in one 
of his nests of Formica fusca was a poor ant which had come into the world 
without antennae. Never having previously met with such a case, he 
watched her with great interest, but she never appeared to leave the nest. 
At length one day he found her wandering about in an aimless sort of 
manner, and apparently not knowing her way at all. After a while she fell 
in with some specimens of Lasius flavus, who directly attacked her. He 
then set himself to separate them, but she was evidently much wounded, 
and lay helplessly on the ground. After some time another Formica fusca 
from her nest came by. She examined the poor sufferer carefully, then 
picked her up tenderly, and carried her away into the nest. It would have 
been difficult, Sir John thinks, for anyone who witnessed this scene to have 
denied to this ant the possession of humane feelings. 
It is clear, from the experiments recorded in the present and in Sir John’s 
former papers, that the ants recognise all their fellows in the same nest, but 
it is very difficult to understand how this can be effected. The nests vary 
very much in size, but in some species 100,000 individuals may probably be 
by no means an unusual number, and in some instances even this is largely 
•exceeded. Now, it seems almost incredible that in such cases every ant 
knows every other one by sight ; neither does it seem possible that all the 
ants in each nest should be characterised from those of other nests by any 
peculiarity. It has been suggested in the case of bees that each nest might 
have some sign or password. The whole subject is full of difficulty. It 
•occurred to Sir John, however, that experiments with pupae might throw 
some light on the subject. Although the ants of every separate nest, say of 
Formica fusca, are deadly enemies, still if larvae or pupae from one nest are 
transferred to another, they are kindly received and tended with, apparently, 
as much care as if they really belonged to the nest. In ant warfare, though 
sex is no protection, the young are spared — at least when they belong to the 
same species. 
Moreover, though the habits and dispositions of ants are greatly changed 
if they are taken away from their nest and kept in solitary confinement, or 
only with a few friends, still under such circumstances they will often care- 
fully tend any young which may be confided to them. Now, if the recog- 
nition were effected by means of some signal or password, then, as it can 
hardly be supposed that the larvae or pupae would be sufficiently intelligent 
to appreciate, still less to remember it, the pupae which were entrusted to ants 
from another nest would have the password, if any, of that nest, and not of 
the one from which they had been taken. Hence, if the recognition were 
effected by some password, or sign with the antennae, they would be amicably 
received in the nest from which their nurses had been taken, but not in their 
own. 
He therefore took a number of pupae out of some of his nests of Formica 
fusca and Lasius niger , and put them in small glasses, some with ants from 
their own nest, some with ants of another nest of the same species. The 
results were that thirty-two ants belonging to Formica fusca and Lasius niger, 
