Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/43

Rh mammals, is circumscribed to an area of but a few inches or feet at the most.

Investigating the orientation of ants, Forel found, first of all, that while the covering of their eyes with an opaque varnish “embarrassed” them to some extent, they went hopelessly astray when their antennæ were removed.

He also repeated Lubbock's well-known experiments of supplying the ants with bridges over obstacles in the neighbourhood of their nests, noting their behaviour when the bridges were changed, removed, or reversed, with the result that he came to credit the olfactory system of ants with much greater powers than the more cautious Lubbock would have believed.

These insects, says Forel, exploring with their mobile antennæ the fields of odour they encounter, form in their memory a kind of “chemical topography.”

Thus when an ant sets out from her nest she distinguishes the various odours and varying strengths of odours she comes upon, noting and memorising them as in two main fields, one on her left side, the other on her right. In order to find her way back again all she has to do is to unwind, so to speak, the roll in her memory, transposing right and left, and this successfully accomplished will bring her back to the point she started from.

If, he concludes, we ourselves were endowed