D 0 ANTS REASON?

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 71, 26 March 1910, Page 10

D 0 ANTS REASON?

CURIOUS EXPERIMENTS. Although Mr. Henry Hill at the London Institution recently would not allow ants any higher quality than that of "instinct," Lord Avcbury sees no reason to alter the conclusions at which he arrived thirty years ago, after many careful experiment*. He still believes that thefae insects have "the gift of reason." "I have not studied ants for many years," Baid Lord Avebury to a repre■eatative of the Daily Mail, "but i hope to renew my experiments before long, and I still adhere to the conclusions which you will find in my book on >' Ants, Bees, and Wasps.' In that work I said, 'When %we see an ant-hill, tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the young, tending their domestic animals, each one fulfilling its duties industriously and without confusion, it is difficult altogether to deny them the gifti of reason ; and the preceding observations tend to confirm the opinion that their menfal powers differ from those of men not so much in kind as in degree. "My principal experiment was one in which I placed intoxicated ants near a nest, 38 heing friends and 40 strangers to the colotiy. Of the friends 27 were taken into the nest and carefully tended, seven were dropped into the moat surrounding it, and four were left alone. Of the strangers thirty were dropped into the water, one was left alone, and nine were taken into the nest. Of the latter seven 'were again removed from the nest, and carried to the water. Could anything more clearly show the reasoning power of the anls ? THE "ANT-COW."-Lord Avebury gives instances without number which seem to show that ante have a higher power than that of instinct. One of the most remarkable relates to their treatment of the eggs of the aphis or "ant-cow." They carefully tend these eggs during the winter, taking them into their nests for the purpose, and then remove the young aphides when hatched in the spring, placing them in earthern "cowsheds," specially constructed on the young shoots of the daisy, the plant which provides the aphis with nourishment. The herd of aphis is then regularly stroked or "milked" for the honey they secrete. "This seems to me," said Lord Avebury, in his historic work, "a most remarkable case: of prudence. Our ants may not perhaps lay un food for the winter; but they do more, for they keep during six months the eggs which will enable them to procure food during the following summer, a ca.se of prudence unexampled in the animal kingdom."