130 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE, 
Espinas also observed (‘ Thierischen Gesellschaften,’ 
German translation, 1879, p. 371) that each single ant 
made its own plan and followed it until a comrade, which 
had caught the idea, joined it, and then they worked to- 
gether in the execution of the same plan. 
Moggridge says of the harvesters of Europe, — - 
I have observed on more than one occasion that when in 
digging into an ants’ nest I have thrown out an elater larva, 
the ants would cluster round it and direct it towards some 
small opening in the soil, which it would quickly enlarge and 
disappear down. At other times, however, the ants would take 
no notice of the elater , and it is my belief that the attentions 
paid to it on former occasions were purely selfish, and that 
they intended to avail themselves of the tunnel thus made 
down into the soil, with the view of reopening communications 
with the galleries and granaries concealed below, the approaches 
to which had been covered up. I have frequently watched the 
ants make use of these passages mined by the elater on these 
occasions. 
And again, as showing apparently intelligent adaptation 
of their usual habits to altered circumstances, he gives an 
account of the behaviour of these ants when a great 
crowd of them were confined by him in a glass jar con- 
taining earth. He says: — 
On the following morning the openings were ten in number, 
and the greatly increased heaps of excavated earth showed that 
they must probably have been at work all night. The amount 
of work done in this short time was truly surprising, for it 
must be remembered that, eighteen hours before, the earth pre- 
sented a perfectly level surface, and the larvss and ants, now 
housed below, found themselves prisoners in a strange place, 
bounded by glass walls, and with no exit possible. 
It seems to me that the ants displayed extraordinary intelli- 
gence in having thus at a moment’s notice devised a plan by 
which the superabundant number of workers could be em- 
ployed at one time without coming in one another’s way. The 
soil contained in the jar was of course less than a tenth part of 
that comprised within the limits of an ordinary nest, while the 
number of workers was probably more than a third of the total 
number belonging to the colony. If therefore but one or two 
entrances had been piexxed in the soil, the workei-s would have 
been for ever running against one another, and a great number 
