From Sir John Lubbock's experiments the answer would seem to be in the negative. That the social habits of ants tend to evolve habits of scrupulous cleanliness, prompting them to much kindly cleaning and shampooing of one another, there is no doubt. But as they live in crowded communities, in comparison with which the Seven Dialsis sparsely populated, these habits are obviously the necessary outcome of the law of natural selection. So also in the state of internecine warfare, in which they mostly exist even with the same species in a different nest, is their habit of fetching wounded ants into the nest and avoiding decimation as far as possible. But beyond the baldest utilitarianism, at which Jeremy Bentham himself would have stood aghast, they seem incapable of going. Sir John Lubbock repeatedly buried ants, but their friends trudged backwards and forwards over their living grave without an effort to rescue them. Even when the sufferer was actually in sight it by no means followed that her friends would assist her. "Of this," says Sir John, "I could give almost any number of instances. Thus, on one occasion, several specimens of Formica fusca belonging to one of my nests were feeding on some honey spread on a slip of glass. One of them had got thoroughly entangled in it. I took her and put her down just in front of another specimen belonging to the same nest, and close by placed a drop of honey. The ant devoted herself to the honey, and entirely neglected her friend, whom she left to perish." Again : "A number of Lasius flavus from one of my captive nests were out feeding at 6 P.M. on some honey. I chloroformed four of them, and also four from a nest in the park at some distance from the place where the first had been originally procured, and put them close to the honey. Up to 8.30 the ants had taken no notice of their insensible fellow-creatures. At 9.20 I found the four friends were still lying as before, while the four strangers had been removed. Two of them I found had been thrown over the edge of the board on which the honey was placed. The other two I could not see." But as in the case of chloroformed ants their friends might reasonably conclude they were dead and done for, Sir John Lubbock repeatedly intoxicated an equal proportion of friends and foes. Whether the antennæ language lends itself to "talking fustian with one's own shadow" we know not, but, at any rate, the sober ants seemed much perplexed and dismayed at finding their intoxicated fellow-creatures in such a melancholy and disgraceful condition, and at first took them up and carried them about in an aimless manner. But this temporary indecision soon gave place to Draconic severity in dealing with the evils of drunkenness. The enemies were drowned, or otherwise destroyed, to a man. But even of the thirty-eight friends seven were thrust into the water. The rest were carried into the nest.* More conclusive still are the following experiments : "To test the affection of ants belonging to the same nest for one another, I tried the following experiments: I took six ants from a nest of Formica fusca, * Linnean Society's Journal, vol. xiii. p. 226. imprisoned them in a small bottle, one end of which was left open, but covered by a layer of muslin. I then put the bottle close to the door of the nest. The muslin was of open texture, the meshes, however, being sufficiently large to prevent the ants from escaping. They could not only, however, see one another, but communicate freely with their antennæ. We now watched to see whether the prisoners would be tended or fed by their friends. We could not, however, observe that the least notice was taken of them. The experiment, nevertheless, was less conclusive than could be wished, because they might have fed at night, or at some time when we were not looking. It struck me, therefore, that it would be interesting to treat some strangers also in the same manner. On September 2nd, therefore, I put two ants from one of my nests of F. fusca into a bottle, the end of which was tied up with muslin as described, and laid it down close to the nest. In a second bottle I put two ants from another nest of the same species. The ants which were at liberty took no notice of the bottle containing their imprisoned friends. The strangers in the other bottle, on the contrary, excited them considerably. The whole day one, two, or more ants stood sentry, as it were, over the bottle. In the evening no less than twelve were collected round it, a larger number than usually came out of the nest at any one time. The whole of the next two days, in the same way, there were more or less ants round the bottle containing the strangers; while, as far as we could see, no notice whatever was taken of the friends. On the 9th the ants had eaten through the muslin, and effected an entrance. We did not chance to be on the spot at the moment, but as I found two ants lying dead, one in the bottle and one just outside, I think there can be no doubt that the strangers were put to death. The friends throughout were quite neglected. September 21st.I then repeated the experiment, putting three ants from another nest into a bottle as before. The same scene was repeated. The friends were neglected. On the other hand, some of the ants were always watching over the bottle containing the strangers, and biting at the muslin which protected them. The next morning at 6 A.M. I found five ants thus occupied. One had caught hold of the leg of one of the strangers, which had unwarily been allowed to protrude through the meshes of the muslin. They worked and watched, though not, as far as I could see, with any system, till 7.30 in the evening, when they effected an entrance, and immediately attacked the strangers. September 24th.-I repeated the same experiment with the same nest. Again the ants came and sat over the bottle containing the strangers, while no notice was taken of the friends. The next morning again, when I got up, I found five ants round the bottle containing the strangers, none near the friends. As in the former case, one of the ants had seized a stranger by the leg, and was trying to drag her through the muslin. All day the ants clustered round the bottle, and bit perseveringly, though not systematically, at the muslin. The same thing happened all the following day. These observations seemed to me sufficiently to test the behaviour of the ants belonging to this nest under these circumstances. I thought it desirable, however, to try also other communities. I selected, therefore, two other nests. was a community of Polyergus rufescens, with numerous slaves. Close to where the ants of this nest came to feed I placed as before two small bottles, closed in the same way-one containing two slave ants from the nest, the other two strangers. These ants, however, behaved quite unlike the preceding, for they took no notice of either bottle, and showed no sign either of affection or hatred. One is almost tempted to surmise that the warlike spirit of these ants was broken by slavery. The other nest which I tried, also a community of Formica fusca, behaved exactly like the first. They took no notice of the bottle containing the friends, but clustered round and eventually forced their way into that containing the strangers. It seems, therefore, that in these curious insects hatred is a stronger passion than affection.": Linnean Society's Journal, vol. xiii. p. 175 (1876). One But surely the fact that hatred is a stronger passion than affection, or rather, to put it less inadequately, that no trace of personal affection per se exists in these creatures, is not "curious," but the inevitable result of the law of natural selection working under social conditions. Keenness in detecting and exterminating enemies would be an essential to the preservation of the nest, and the communities most endued with these instincts would be the most likely to live and thrive. But personal affection, except in the one form in which we trace it, economy of life in aggressive warfare, by introducing, in Mr. Grote's words, the "caprices, the desires, and the passions of each separate individuals would tend to render the maintenance of any established community impossible," natural selection or the survival of the serviceable would tend to suppress rather than evolve it. Mere gregariousness is powerless to evolve the most elementary factors necessary for the construction of the moral life. And granted that moral forces have appeared on the scene, "our knowledge supplies us," as Dr. Martineau says, "with the when rather than the whence." Something more is needed than mere theory to prove their linear development. "Instead of advancing from behind they may have entered from the side."* I conclude my brief summary of modern observations on the nature and sociology of these curious and interesting creatures with Émile Blanchard's words :: "Tout en reconnaissant les fourmis pour des bêtes douées de discernement et d'une sorte de raison, il faut, néanmoins, se tenir en garde contre des appréciations trop favorables. Les fourmis sont d'habiles architectes qui ne sortent pas d'une spécialité, des nourrices parfaites, des guerrières vaillantes et rusées, elles entendent l'économie domestique, un peu la politique; cela ne va pas plus loin."t ELLICE HOPKINS. * "Modern Materialism" by James Martineau, LL.D., D.D., p. 50. Sixth edition, 1878. + "Les Fourmis," Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th October, 1875. THE ELECTION AND THE EASTERN QUESTION. IT T is hard to measure the events of our own time, going on under our own eyes, by exactly the same standard as that which we apply to the events of long-past times. There are two difficulties in so doing. We are on the one hand tempted to rate the events of our own time above their relative greatness, because we can see their positive greatness more clearly than we can see that of the events of any other time. On the other hand we are tempted to rate them below their true greatness, through mere familiarity with the actors who are at work and with the processes which they employ. On the whole perhaps each of these tendencies gets the better with regard to one class of passing events. Men are apt to exaggerate the importance of the military events of their own time. They are apt to cry out that the war which is going on at the moment when they speak is greater, more terrible, more destructive, perhaps more righteous or unrighteous, than any war that ever happened before. It may be so or it may not be so; but people are apt to cry out that it is so, simply because the present war is the one which fills their own imaginations at the moment. There are two or three reasons for this. One is that a war, while it has all the living interest of a present event, has also something of the dignity and mystery of a past event. Wars are not always happening; they come only now and then, and they always have something strange and striking about them. To the great mass of us, they are things of which we simply hear or read as done by others, we have ourselves no share in them, no control over them. Thus a war even of the present moment has something in common with an event of past times; it has the same kind of remoteness and historic dignity. The civil events of our own time we are, for the same kind of reasons, tempted to underrate. We know too much about them; we have too large a share in them them selves; we can too easily see their small as well as their great side; the whole machinery is a matter of every-day business; the whole thing in short is vulgarized by familiarity. The whole charm of distance, which comes in in the case of the military events of our own time, is lacking in the case of the parliamentary debates which we read every day; it is still more lacking in the case of the election in which we ourselves take a part. It does call for a certain effort to look on an English election, with all its familiar and not always ennobling surroundings, as a first-rate event in English and European history. Yet to me at least the election which has lately happened certainly seems to have a full right to that character. Soon after it had passed, I stood on the scene of one of the greatest events of our former history, and the modern event seemed to me to be fully entitled to rank side by side with the ancient one. On the hill of Lewes I felt that the year 1880 might claim to take its place by the year 1261, that the deliverance wrought by the voice of Gladstone was not less than the deliverance wrought by the sword of Simon. It may be that an accidental circumstance have given the two events a likeness in my own eyes which they may not have in the eyes of others. Both to me have the charm of distance. As it has happened, both are to me events of which I have heard, but in which I had myself no share. As I had no chance of striking a blow in the one case, I had no chance of giving a vote in the other. The late election may therefore scem greater to me than it does to those who were actors in it, to those who either gave votes or had votes given for them. But to me, according to my light, it seems one of the foremost events of English history; one of those of which Englishmen-Scotchmen and Welshmen yet more-have most reason to be proud. It is the return of Godwine without the harrying at Porlock; it is the fight of Lewes, with, we may trust, no Evesham to follow it. One new rule in our conventional constitution seems to be fully established by the events of the last twelve years. It used to be held that the fate of a Ministry could be decided only by the voice of the House of Commons. The precedents of 1868, of 1874, and of 1880, have ruled that, when a Ministry appeals to the country by a dissolution of Parliament, and when the elections show that the new House of Commons will certainly be unfavourable to the Ministry, that Ministry must resign, just as much as if the House of Commons itself had spoken. That is to say, whereas the House of Commons was formerly held to be the only mouthpiece of the nation, it is now held that the nation itself may speak more directly with its own mouth. An informal referendum or plebiscitum—I mean in the real, not in the Buonapartist sense-is now established as one of our institutions, and that by the act of Lord Beaconsfield in the first instance. I confess that, both in 1868 and in 1874, I thought that it would have been more dignified and more in accordance with the theory of representative VOL. XXXVII. 3 s |