230 
NATURE NOTES 
it as an evident necessity that no society can exist without the sentiment of 
morality. 
“ Everyone” (he .says) “ who has either spoken or written on the subject has 
agreed in considering this sentiment as absolutely indispensable to the very 
existence of society. Without the diffusion of a certain measure of this feeling 
throughout all the members of the social union, the caprices, the desires, and the 
passions of each separate individual would render the maintenance of any estab- 
blished communion impossible. Positive morality, under some form or other, 
has existed in every society of which the world has ever had experience.” 
If this be so, the question naturally arises whether ants also are moral and 
accountable beings. They have their desires, their passions, even their caprices. 
The young ate absolutely helpless. Their communities are sometimes so numerous 
that, perhaps, London and Peking are almost the only human cities which can 
compare with them. Moreover, their nests are no mere collections of independent 
individuals, nor even temporary associations, like the flocks of migratory birds, 
but organised communities, labouring with the utmost harmony for the common 
good. The remarkable analogies which in so many ways they present to our 
human societies render them peculiarly interesting to us, and one cannot but long 
to know more of their character, how the world appears to them, and to what 
extent they are conscious and reasonable beings. 
I have not, at any rate, nor indeed has any one else, ever seen a quarrel 
between any two ants of the same nest. All is harmony. If, indeed, they are 
compulsorily made drunk, then, no doubt, they begin to quarrel. But no ant 
would voluntarily so degrade itself. Among the so-called higher animals which 
live in association, if one is old or ailing it is often attacked. This is never the 
case among ants, instances of active assistance are, indeed, common. I have 
often witnessed cases of care and tenderness on their part. 
In one of my nests was an ant which had come into the world without 
antennte. Never having previously met with such a case I watched her with 
great interest, but she never appeared to leave the nest. At length one day I 
found her wandering about in an aimless sort of manner, apparently not knowing 
her way at all. After a while she fell in with some ants of another species, who 
directly attacked her. I at once set myself to separate them, but, whether owing 
to the wounds she had received from her enemies, or to my rough though well- 
meant handling, or to both, she was evidently much wounded, and lay helplessly 
on the ground. After some time another ant from the same nest came by. She 
examined the poor sufferer carefully, then picked her up and carried her away 
into the nest. It would have been difficult for anyone who had witnessed the 
scene to have denied to this ant the possession of humane feelings. In face of 
such facts as these it is impossible to regard ants as mere exquisite automatons. 
When we see an ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants, 
excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, 
gathering food, feeding the young, tending their domestic animals — each one 
fulfilling its duties industriously and without confusion — it is difficult altogether to 
deny to them the gift of reason ; and the preceding observations tend to confirm 
the opinion that their mental powers differ from those of men not so much in 
kind as in degree. 
This also is Dr. Forel’s view, lie says : — 
“ It results from the unanimous observations of all the connoisseurs that 
sensation, perception and association, inference, memory, and habit follow in 
the social insects, on the whole, the same fundamental laws as in the vertebrates 
and ourselves.” 
Eton Nature-Study and Observational Lessons. Part II. By M. Davenport 
Hill and W. M. Webb. Duckworth and Co. Price 3s. 6d. net. 
Second parts and sequels do not always fulfil the promise of their pre- 
decessors. No such discredit can be alleged in the case of the present work. It 
has sometimes been said that those who talk and write about Nature-study are 
vague in their language, never clearly saying what they mean by the term, and 
making impracticable demands upon the school time talde, but such a complaint 
again could never be urged against Messrs. Hill and Webb's book. Seedlings, 
