DO ANTS SEASON?

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 984, 2 March 1910, Page 3

DO ANTS SEASON?

LORD AVEBURYS' BELIEF UNSHAKEN. CURIOUS EXPERIMENTS. Although Mr Henry Hill at the London Institution last week would not allow ants any higher quality than that of "instinct," Lord Ayebury see no reason to alter the conclusions at which he arrived thirty years ago, after many careful experiments. He still believes that these insects have "the gift of reason." "I have not studied ants for many years," said Lord Avebury, "but I hope to renew my experiments before long, and I still adhere to the conclusions which you will and in my book on 'Ants, Bees, and Wasps.' In that work I said, 'When we see an anthill, 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 to them the gift of reason; and the preceding observations, attend to confirm the opinion that their mental powers-differ from those of man not so much in kind as in degree." "My principal experiment was one in which I placed intoxicated ants near a nest, thirty-eight being friends and forty strangers to the colony. Of the friends twenty-seven 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 fjrom the nest and carried to the water. Could anything more cearly show the reasoning power of the ants?" THE "ANT-COW." Lord Avebury gives instances without number which seem to show that ants have a higher power than that of instinct. One of the most remarkable relates to their treat ment ot the eggs of thf aphis or "ant-cow." They carefully tend these eggs daring the winter, taking them into their nests for the purpose, and then remove the young aphides when hatched in the spring, placing them in earthen "cow-sheds" sp2cially constructed on the young shoots of the daisy, the plant which provides the aphis with nourishment. The herd of aphides thus reared is then regularly stroked or "milked" for the honsy they secrete. "This seems to me," said Lord Avebury, in his historic work, "a most remarkable case of prudeice. Our ants may not pernap3 lay up food for the winter, but they do more, fir they keep during six months the eggs which will enable tntin to procure food during the following summer, a case of prudence unexampled in the animal kingdom."