. Ants, bees, and wasps. A record of observations on the habits of the social Hymenoptera . ae, 8 went over L to I,and the remainder on to D. In another similar experiment the marked ant made16 journeys; and during the same time 13 other antscame to the point of junction. Of these 13, 6 wenton to D, 7 crossed over L to I, and not one found thelarvae. Thus altogether, out of 92 ants, 30 went on tod, 51 crossed over in the wrong direction to I, and only11 found their way to the larvae. From January 2 to January 24 (1875) I made aseries of similar observations; and during this time 56ants came in
. Ants, bees, and wasps. A record of observations on the habits of the social Hymenoptera . ae, 8 went over L to I,and the remainder on to D. In another similar experiment the marked ant made16 journeys; and during the same time 13 other antscame to the point of junction. Of these 13, 6 wenton to D, 7 crossed over L to I, and not one found thelarvae. Thus altogether, out of 92 ants, 30 went on tod, 51 crossed over in the wrong direction to I, and only11 found their way to the larvae. From January 2 to January 24 (1875) I made aseries of similar observations; and during this time 56ants came in all. Of these, 20 went straight on tod, 26 across the paper to I, and only10 to the larvae. This, I think, gives strong reason toconclude that, under such circumstances,ants track one another by scent. I then slightly altered the arrange-ment of the papers as shown in theaccompanying diagram (fig. 4). A, asbefore, is the nest, o being the is the board; h is a glass on whichare placed the larvae; m is a similar glass, but empty a strip of paper: to the end of n are pinned tiro. 168 EXPERIMENTS TO TEST other strips / and g, in such a manner that they can befreely turned round, so that each can be turned at willeither to h or m. Under ordinary circumstances thepaper/, as in the figure, was turned to the larvae ; butwhenever any ant, excepting the marked one, came, Iturned the papers, so that / led to m and g to h. Theresult was striking, and I give the observation in fullin the Appendix. In all, 17 ants came, every one ofwhom took the wrong turn and went to m. Although the observations above recorded seem toFig. 5. me almost conclusive, still I varied the experiments once more (see fig. 5),making the connexion between theboard B and the glass containing thelarvae by three separate but similar1 strips of paper, d, e, and /, as shown in e the figure. Whenever, however, a //\\ strange ant came, I took up the strip f 1— —fl and rubbed my finger over it two orthree time
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbees, booksubjectwasp
