Tiny Loves and Hates The Social World of the Ants.

By Auguste Forel. Translated by C. K. Ogden. (Putnams. 2 vols. 3 gns.) The Origin of Instinct. By E. Bugnion. Translated liy C. K. 'Ogden. (Kegan Paul. 58.) Hunting under the Microscope. By Sir Arthur E. Shipley. Edited-by C. F. A. Pantin. (Berm. 8s. 6d.) BOTH the translator, Mr. Ogden, and thee-publishers of The Social Wdild of the Ants are to be congratulated on this sumptuous presentation of the life-work of a thinker and

scientist. ‘1%lot only is the book beautifully printed and illustrated, both in colour and line ; the translation is also quite, excellent,,,with never a hint of those inversions and complexities that characterize, while they do not deform, the original.

It is almost needless to say that we cannot subscribe to many . of M. Forel's personal opinions, which are freely ex- pressed' throughout the book. The author is full of years as well as of honour in the world of science, and in this,

probably his.- last work, he has every right to be personal. We welcome it, indeed, while reserving our own opinion about the feasihility Of. ensuring the peace of the world on an 0 international alliance based on that of polyealic formicaries."

Such a world-wide formicity is alien alike to human instincts and the most elementary common sense : in our view the _chief value of a comparison such is contained in these volumes between the world of the ants and that of men

is to learn how terrible, how soul-destroying are the results of Socialism pushed to their logical extreme, and how we may avoid the fate of the formicae while -there is yet- time to

eschew the ethics of the ant-nest. But can ants and men be compared. at all ? It is doubtful, for the ant is clearly only a cell in an organism, or the limb of a body which is the ant-nest. It is not individualized like a man, although it does have- a mind which is more or less its own.

An .adequate . summary of these. volumes would occupy several columns of the Spectator. We learn of the evolution,

development external and internal anatomy of the ants (the fact that they have their skeletons outside instead of inside- their bodies is one of those simple, yet enormously

important fundamentals that we are apt to overlook when considering their psychology), then we come to consider their geographical distribution, sensations, physiology and psycho- logy, the animal guests that they entertain (more than 3,090 species either harbour parasites or worship .vampires of some ldnd), the strange topo-chemical sense of their antennae, their sports and games (the red ants ride a beetle for fun—the lotnechusa strumosa), the effect of drugs such as 'corrosive sublimate and opium, which act quite differently on ants and on :human beings, the monstrosities and inversions of the species (M. Forel has seen hermaphrodites . of all four sexes —male, female, soldier, worker—in lateral, oblique, or double aspects, and has also come upon an, ant with seven legs and five wings : staggering permutations, of perversities); then fallow chapters on ant-nests, on observation apparatus, with some delightful pages on field expecliticins in Switzerland,

Italy, and America, and lastly we come to the mating of our little Mends—here for a moment we must draw breath, for we are not yet at the end of the first volume.

The nuptials of the ants are not as poetic as that described in that marvellous passage of Maeterlinck :—

" Drunk with her wings and obeying the magnificent law of her species that chooses her lover for her, and wills that the strongest alone shall attain her in the solitude of the ether ; she rises and ever rises ; the blue air of the morning rushes, for the first time, into her abdominal stigmata and sings like the blood of Heaven in the myriad tubes linked with the trachaeal sacs, nourished on space, that fill half her body. She rises still. To some lonely region must she ' soar."

More prosaic are the polyandrous' amours with which we are concerned ; yet the marriage flight is the day of days, the crown of the year in every ant-nest. As the wings of the newly hatched males and females grow firmer, they become

more enterprising. A fever of unrest, an upwelling of that tide of emotion that pervades all life created, steals upon the nest. Even the Martha-cares of the workers are interrupted. They, too, fuss over the winged sexes, accompanying them -to the grass-blades, whence they are so soon to set forth on their adventure, caressing them with their antennae, and guarding

over them like so many sheep-dogs over their flocks. For several days, according to the temperature and the weather, these preliminary rites continue. Finally the ecstatic instant arrives. The flutes of Pan; unheard by human ear, sound through these tiny colonies, and in that magic there is a truce to minty and racial discord : afire with love, all the ant-nests in the district take flight together. They fly up to the topmost

point of a poplar, a church tower, a hill summit, sometimes darkening the sky with their myriads. Colonies that would fight each Other to the death at ordinary' times now mingle and mate under the blue of heaven. For hours the swarm

pulsates rhythmically, the sexes clasping each other and falling to 'the ground together ; while' the workers wait distressed below for the sisters that they shall never welcome to the nest again. Yet perhaps theirs is the happier lot. They know not the raptures of those others in the empyrean, who pay for their little hour of love by long months of darkness and solitude and struggle to fulfil the law of life, but they keep their feet on the ground—and live.

Once fertilized, the females cast off their wings by means of bodily contortions, and then crawl away somewhere, to dig out a chaMber wherein to enclose themselves and attempt to found a new colony in solitary state. More often they die, unsuccessful in their immense effort. As to the males, they perish with the setting of the sun that saw their happiness. We must hurry on. What is the language of the ants ? That they can communicate with each other by means of their antennae is admitted: might not the slow-motion cinema enable 'us to decipher their code and learn their thoughts ? What infinite possibilities the mere suggestion evokes!..One point in passing : M. Ford misunderstands Fabre in writing

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that the latter-claimed some mystical faculty for the Emperor moth's unerring flight towards the female. Fabre, I think, was anticipating " wireless," and it is at least as good an explanation of a strange phenomenon (see below) as the super- natural sense of smell with which he credits these creatures.

Volume II. deals with the alliances and wars of ants, including the deeply interesting experiments of Miss Fielde on the friendship which can be induced between species (a thrilling story, this) and with lestobiosis and cleptobiosis- brigandage and theft—by which many species live. It was when only a boy of ten that M. Forel made his first discovery of such murderous habits, publishing them in a brochure at the age of twenty. Slave-making, mushroom-growing, and weaving ants, agile and sluggish, jumping and projecting ants, here is a whole universe that we in our pride have neglected. Yet what lessons we might derive from its study I

The concluding essay of these two volumes, which shall surely remain the myrmecologist's vade-mecum for many years, is by another hand and consists of Professor Bugnion's mono- graph on The Origin of Instinct, which is also published separately. When he broke into a termite's nest and allowed it to be attacked by ants, the blind termite soldiers rushed to the breach, and formed.a circle round it, resisting their enemies with open mandibles. These strange insects we have already discussed in another review. What unseen, unknown— perhaps unknowable—power directs their destinies ? Arc they separate creatures, or parts of a single entity, as the body of man is one, while his various functions have a certain independent volition ? How is the courage of the soldiers transmitted from generation to generation ? We do not yet know, and when we have found out we shall be nearer to an important secret of life.

What gorgeous Provençal evenings Fabre evokes for us in his inimitable way ! Social Life, in the Insect World is, of course, only a reprint, but one that we welcome and recom- mend to our readers for its cheapness and good print. The whole beautiful philosophy of Fabre can never be well enough known, nor his delightful style, which in spite of its simplicity (or because of it) conceals so much good craftsmanship.

Let us, as we have already mentioned it, recall the story of the Great Peacock Moth. She was born on a May morning and imprisoned under wire gauze ; that evening the whole house seemed full of these great and rare creatures. "My study had become the cave of a necromancer, the darkness alive with creatures of the night." Through the gloom and storm of that spring evening, across dense thickets of plane trees, and roses and lilac bushes, the moths had to come to woo the captive virgin. How did these visitors know that that morning out of a cocoon on Fabre's laboratory table a female had been born of their race ? What instinct led them, night after night, unerringly across a mile of darkness ? We do not yet know, but Fabie's guess at etheric– *a-yes (which were practically unknown when he wrote) deserves more attention than M. Forel has given it. No one has ever written quite like Fabre. He died poor and unhonoured, but his fame will endure : there is strength as well as sweetness in all his work.

There is no space left to commend with more than a word two other excellent little books. Insects, by Professor Balfour- Browne (in that first-rate series the Home University Library), is " deep but not too difficult, nutritious but not heavy." We read of such strange creatures as the Scolia wasp, which burrows in the ground in search of the larvae of Chafer beetles. Having found one, she neatly drives her sting into its nerve ganglion and then lays her eggs by its side in such a position that it is safe from moving jaws and legs. When the grub hatches out, it can feed upon the fat of the unfortunate larva without moving from the spot where it hatches, a very convenient arrangement—for the grub But there are many more complicated adjustments to life which the reader will find in this book. Mr. Balfour-Browne makes a point that the deterioration of the male insect which accompanies a changed- outlook of the female in highly organized insect communities (such as the termites) renders the future of the human being not too promising from our present-day eugenic point of view. This is only true if we regard insects as comparable to human beings and eugenics as a science that " will do everything to exterminate individuality and reduce all workers to a common level." Needless to say these premises are, to say the least of it, disputable. The late Sir Arthur Shipley's Hunting Under the Microscope deserves a page to itself : instead, all we can _say is that if amateur students of insect life do not know Sir Arthur they should be ashamed of themselves. In water from a ditch or gutter, we may find under the microscope (if we are lucky) specimens of small animals known as Tardi- grada, which look like " dear little sucking-pigs in plate armour. In their natural state—in a damp atmosphere— they live and move and have their being like any other animals, but if their surroundings dry up then their, move- ments gradually slacken until they entirely cease." For years they remain dried up, looking like a grain of sand. But if they be moistened with water their wrinkles disappear, their legs stretch out, and they become so plump "that you feel inclined to pat them, only they are too small." After a quarter of an hour, the Tardigrade crawls away on its lawful occasions. This little extract, chosen at random, may give the reader an idea of Sir Arthur's manner. In this posthumous collection of articles his genius reasserts itself and shines brightly on a world that is too often clouded by pompous nomenclature.

F. Y-B.