100 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
sill for ants coming up from the garden. In consequence of 
Herr G-redler’s communications he took it into his head to put 
the bait for the ants, pounded sugar, into an old inkstand, and 
hung this up by a string to the cross-piece of his window, and 
left it hanging freely. A few ants were in with the bait. 
These soon found their road out over the string with their grains 
of sugar, and so their way back to their friends. Before long a 
procession was arranged on the new road from the window-sill 
along the string to the spot where the sugar was, and so things 
went on for two days, nothing fresh occurring. But one day 
the procession stopped at the old feeding-place on the window- 
sill, and took the food thence, without going up to the pendent 
sugar-jar. Closer observation revealed that about a dozen of 
the rogues were in the jar above, and were busily and unweary- 
ingly carrying the grains of sugar to the edge of the pot, and 
throwing them over to their comrades down below. 
Many other instances of the division of labour might 
be given besides these, and those to be mentioned here- 
after in other connections throughout the course of the 
present chapter ; but enough has been said to show that 
the principle is unquestionably acted upon by sundry 
species of ants. 
That ants are liable to make mistakes, and, when they 
do, that they profit by experience, is shown by the follow- 
ing experiment made by Moggridge ; and many other in- 
stances might be given were it desirable : — 
It sometimes happens that an ant has manifestly made a bad 
selection, and is told on its return that what it has brought 
home with much pains is no better than rubbish, and is hustled 
out of the nest, and forced to throw its burden away. In order 
to try whether these creatures were not fallible like other 
mortals, I one day took out with me a little packet of grey and 
white porcelain beads, and scattered these in the path of a har- 
vesting train. They had scarcely lain a minute on the earth 
before one of the largest workers seized upon a bead, and with 
some difficulty clipped it with its mandibles and trotted back at 
a great pace to the nest. I waited for a little while, my atten 
tion being divided between the other ants who were vainly en- 
deavouring to remove the beads, and the entrance down which 
the worker had disappeared, and then left the spot. On my 
return in an hour’s time, I found the ants passing unconcernedly 
by and over the beads which lay where I had strewed them n 
