328 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
their instinctive adjustments. Unfortunately observations 
on this subject are very sparse, but such as they are they 
hold out a strong inducement for any one who has the 
opportunity to experiment with the view of testing the 
intelligence of those species in connection with which the 
following observations have been made. 
Reaumur states that ants will make no attempt to enter an 
inhabited beehive to get at the contained honey, knowing that 
hhe bees will slaughter them if they do so. But if the hive is 
uninhabited, or the bees all dead, the ants will swarm into the 
hive as long as any honey is to be found there. 
P. Huber records that a wall which had been partly 
erected by ants was observed by him— 
As though it were intended to support the still unfinished 
arched roof of a large room, which was being built from the 
opposite side. But the workers which had begun the arch had 
given it too low an elevation for the wall on which it was to 
rest, and if it had been continued on the same lines it would 
have met the partition wall halfway up, and this was to be 
avoided. I had just made this criticism to myself, when a new 
arrival, after looking at the work, came to the same conclusion. 
For it began at once to destroy what had been done, and to 
heighten the wall on which it was supported, and to make a 
new arch with the materials of the old one under my very eyes. 
When the ants begin an undertaking it ^eems exactly as if an 
idea slowly ripened into execution in their minds. Thus if one 
of them finds two stalks lying crosswise on the nest, which make 
possible the formation of a room, or some little rafters which 
suggest the walls and the corners, it first observes the various 
parts accurately, and then quickly and neatly heaps little pellets 
of earth in the interspaces and alongside the stalks. It brings 
from every side materials that seem appropriate, and some- 
times takes such from the uncompleted works of its companions, 
so much is it urged on by the idea which it has once conceived, 
and by the desire to execute it. It goes and comes and turns 
back again, until its plan is recognisable by the others. 
Ebrard, in his 6 Etudes de Mceurs 9 (p. 3), gives the 
following remarkable instance of the display of intelli- 
gence of F. fusca : — 
The earth was damp and the workers were in full swing. 
