Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/414

400 less than twelve friends. As in the previous case, she ran on ahead, and they followed very slowly and by no means directly, taking, in fact, nearly half an hour to reach the fly. The first ant, after vainly laboring for about a quarter of an hour to move the fly, started off again to the nest. Meeting one of her friends on the way, she talked with her a little, then continued toward the nest, but, after going about a foot, changed her mind, and returned with her friend to the fly. After some minutes, during which two or three other ants came up, one of them detached a leg, which she carried off to the nest, coming out again almost immediately with six friends, one of whom, curiously enough, seemed to lead the way, tracing it, I presume, by scent. I then removed the pin, and they carried off the fly in triumph. Again, on June 15th, another ant belonging to the same nest had found a dead spider, about the same distance from the nest. I pinned down the spider as before. The ant did all in her power to move it; but after trying for twelve minutes, she went off to the nest. For a quarter of an hour no other ant had come out, but in some seconds she came out again with ten companions. As in the preceding case, they followed very leisurely. She ran on ahead, and worked at the spider for ten minutes; when, as none of her friends had arrived to her assistance, though they were wandering about evidently in search of something, she started back home again. In three quarters of a minute after entering the nest she reappeared, this time with fifteen friends, who came on somewhat more rapidly than the preceding batch, though still but slowly. By degrees, however, they all came up, and after most persevering efforts carried off the spider piecemeal. On July 7th I tried the same experiment with a soldier of Pheidole megacephala. She pulled at the fly for no less than fifty minutes, after which she went to the nest and brought five friends exactly as the Atta had done."

Can anything be more remarkable than the extraordinary difference in the demeanor of the ants taught by personal experience, and of the ants trusting to the report of another? Obviously, the latter had a very languid belief in the statements of their friends, just enough to make them enter on the enterprise, but not enough to make them prosecute it even so far as to hasten their pace in order to keep up with their eager friend. Clearly, the ants are not very good judges of character. Their predisposition to distrust sanguine statements, like the predisposition of timid conservatives in general, is so deep, that at the first obstacle they fall away, perhaps questioning the use of tasking themselves for news that sounds so improbable as that of a treasure trove. Sir John Lubbock even reports one case in which a slave-ant, of the Polyergus species, twice returned to her nest in search of cooperation in vain. Nothing she could say would induce her fellow slaves to enter on a new bit of work, without better evidence of its remunerative character than a wandering fellow-servant's report gave