Appendix II: The Ants

Pierre Huber’s Les fourmis indigènes (Genève, 1810), of which a cheap edition was issued in 1861 by Cherbuliez, in the Bibliothèque Genevoise, and of which translations ought to be circulated in cheap editions in every language, is not only the best work on the subject, but also a model of really scientific research. Darwin was quite right in describing Pierre Huber as an even greater naturalist than his father. This book ought to be read by every young naturalist, not only for the facts it contains but as a lesson in the methods of research. The rearing of ants in artificial glass nests, and the test experiments made by subsequent explorers, including Lubbock, will all be found in Huber’s admirable little work. Readers of the books of Forel and Lubbock are, of course, aware that both the Swiss professor and the British writer began their work in a critical mood, with the intention of disproving Huber’s assertions concerning the admirable mutual-aid instincts of the ants; but that after a careful investigation they could only confirm them. However, it is unfortunately characteristic of human nature gladly to believe any affirmation concerning men being able to change at will the action of the forces of Nature, but to refuse to admit well-proved scientific facts tending to reduce the distance between man and his animal brothers.

Mr. Sutherland (Origin and Growth of Moral Instinct) evidently began his book with the intention of proving that all moral feelings have originated from parental care and familial love, which both appeared only in warm-blooded animals; consequently he tries to minimize the importance of sympathy and co-operation among ants. He quotes Büchner’s book, Mind in Animals, and knows Lubbock’s experiments. As to the works of Huber and Forel, he dismisses them in the following sentence; “but they [Büchner’s instances of sympathy among ants] are all, or mostly all, marred by a certain air of sentimentalism... which renders them better suited for school books than for cautious works of science, and the same is to be remarked [italics are mine] of some of Huber’s and Forel’s best-known anecdotes” (vol. i. p. 298).

Mr. Sutherland does not specify which “anecdotes” he means, but it seems to me that he could never have had the opportunity of perusing the works of Huber and Forel. Naturalists who know these works find no “anecdotes” in them.

The recent work of Professor Gottfried Adlerz on the ants in Sweden (Myrmecologiska Studier: Svenska Myror och des Lefnadsförhâllanden, in Bihan till Svenska A kademiens Handlingar, Bd. xi. No. 18, 1886) may be mentioned in this place. It hardly need be said that all the observations of Huber and Forel concerning the mutual-aid life of ants, including the one concerning the sharing of food, felt to be so striking by those who previously had paid no attention to the subject, are fully confirmed by the Swedish professor (pp. 136–137).

Professor G. Adlerz gives also very interesting experiments to prove what Huber had already observed; namely, that ants from two different nests do not always attack each other. He has made one of his experiments with the ant, Tapinoma erraticum. Another was made with the common Rufa ant. Taking a whole nest in a sack, he emptied it at a distance of six feet from another nest. There was no battle, but the ants of the second nest began to carry the pupae of the former. As a rule, when Professor Adlerz brought together workers with their pupae, both taken from different nests, there was no battle; but if the workers were without their pupæ, a battle ensued (pp. 185–186).

He also completes Forel’s and MacCook’s observations about the “nations” of ants, composed of many nests, and, taking his own estimates, which brought him to take an average of 300,000 Formica exsecta ants in each nest, he concludes that such “nations” may reach scores and even hundreds of millions of inhabitants.

Maeterlinck’s admirably written book on bees, although it contains no new observations, would be very useful, if it were less marred with metaphysical “words.”