Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1882-07-11

pecies. The r. sanguineo raids the
tests of its neighbors and carries of the
,up@, who, on coming to maturity,
.dapt themselves to circumstances, as
list in the ordinary household duties,
md, having no young of their own
pecies, feed and tend those of their
,aptors. The polyergats refuscens
Amazon already alluded TO
must furnish an awful example to the
abolitionist ant, II such there be. lts
have become useless except
not care for its young; it lays up no
starves to death In the midst Of plenty.
slaveholding genus, the amer
gates, cannot even fight, but "weak IN
body and mind, few in numbers, ana
nearly extinct, the miserable
Of far superior ancestors
maintains precariOus existence as the |
parasite of its former slaves"
The behavior of ants to one announcer
differs much, according to circumstan-
ces. An ant may run away ii she Is
alone or fight furiously if accompanied
by crowd of friends, very much ike
man. II an ant Ia fighting with one OF
another species her friends rarely come
to her assistance-do not even form
ring and look on-and when in war
several combine against q foe, 1t is to
destroy the enemy rather than to save
the friend. Sir John saw one ant ex'
PEELED from the community. being taken
up by lusty member, carried to the
outer wall and dumped over it without
ceremony, possibly for the crime OF age
or debility. An ant will be left to die
In pool of honey while its fellows car
ry off the food. Our author tried half
drowning numbers of ants and leaving
them in the highways of the nest, but
with hardly an exception their COM
rades ignored them and left them to
come to by themselves. They did not
miss, or at least did not try to rescue
their fellows whom Sir John buried.
covered with muslin, and lot OF enc.
mics in another bottle, placing both
near nest, its inmates paid no atten-
ton to their friends, but lab0red assid-
uously till they got at and destroyed
their foes: $50 far as I can observe"
he writes, 'sants of the same nest never
quarrel. I have never seen the slightest
evidence of ill-temper in any Of my nests
all is harmony, nor are instances OF
active assistance at all rare" He tried
chloroforming and Intoxicating friendly
and stranger ants to see whether they
would be recognized in state OF 1nsen-
sibility, and found that four ffths OF
the friends were taken into the nest
while four.fifths of the strangers were
dumped into the moat and seven OF the
nine to whom hospitality WAS shown
were promptly brought out IN few
minutes and shot into the water. Sir
John Lubbock's experiments fully cor
roborated the observations OF Huber as
to the fact that whenever q stranger Is
put among the ants of another meet she
is at once attacked. Ants not only
know all their comrades, but recognize
them even after heightened separa-
ton. In one case members Of q COM
munity were identified and amicably
received after an absence of twenty. one
months, though at times the younger
ants would treat them rudely TIL ex,
plantations had been made. Sir John
removed ants from the nest In the CON-
dition of pupee, placed them in the care
of friends, and when they had grown
up sent them hack to the parent nest,
where they were received a. friends,
and the ants treated amicably those
that had been brought up by. enemies,
| while if these latter were put in the
| nests of strangers they were attacked.
These experiments show that the theory
that ants recognize each other by sort
of pass word is untenablo. The same
results were shown when the colony
was separated before the young had
peen born.
As to the power of Communication
between ants, Sir John reports some
very interesting and conclusive expert
ments. He pinned dead spider to a
piece Of cork some distance from the
nest. where an ant could find it. She
tried to move it, but gave up after IL
minutes work and went to the nest,
from which in few seconds she re-
turned with ten companions, though no
ant had came out for a quarter of an
4 hour before. "They followed very leis-
urely. 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 wander
| ing about evidently In search of some.
thing, she started back home again. In
three quarters of minute she re ap-
peared, this time with fifteen friends,
who came on somewhat more rapidly
than the preceding batch, though still
but slowly. By degrees, however, they
| ali came up, ana, AFTER most perSeverlng
efforts, carried off the spider piece
| meal" Our author concludes after re-
citing several such experiments:
| "These experiments certainly seem
to indicate the possession by ants of
something approaching to language. 1t
is impossible to doubt that the friends
were brought out by the first ant, aud
as she returned empty-handed to the
| nest the others cannot have been in
duced to follow her merely by observ-
ing her proceedings. In face of such
facts as these it ia impossible not to ask
ourselves how far ants are mere exquis
tie automatons? How far are they
conscious beings? When we see an
ant hill tenanted by thousands of in
dustrious Inhabitants, excavating cham
bers, forming tunnels, making roads.
guarding their homes, gathering food,
feeding the young, tending their do
nestle animals, each one fulfilling it's
duties industriously and without confu.
sion-it is difficult altogether to deny to
them the gift of reason, and the proceed
ing observations tend to confirm the
opinion that their mental powers differ
from those of men, not so much in
kind as In degree"