It is, as we have seen, among the higher invertebrates, especially in insects, that some of the most remarkable and complex instincts may be found. There is,[50] however, a tendency to ascribe the behaviour of insects entirely to instinct, without sufficient evidence that neither imitation, instruction, nor intelligent learning play any part. This is, perhaps, a survival of the old-fashioned view that all the acts of the lower animals are performed from instinct, whereas those of human beings are to be regarded as rational or intelligent. In popular writings and lectures, for example, we frequently find some or all of the following activities of ant-life ascribed to instinct: recognition of members of the same nest; powers of communication; keeping aphides for the sake of their sweet secretion; collection of aphid eggs in October, hatching them out in the nest, and taking them in the spring to the daisies, on which they feed, for pasture; slave-making and slave-keeping, which, in some cases, is so ancient a habit that the enslavers are unable even to feed themselves; keeping insects as beasts of burden, _e.g._ a kind of plant-bug to carry leaves; keeping beetles, etc., as domestic pets; habits of personal cleanliness, one ant giving another a brush-up, and being brushed-up in return; habits of play and recreation; habits of burying the dead; the storage of grain and nipping the budding rootlet to prevent further germination; the habits described by Dr. Lincecum, and to a large extent confirmed by Dr. McCook, that Texan ants prepare a clearing around their nest, and six months later harvest the ant-rice, a kind of grass of which they are particularly fond, even, according to Lincecum, seeking and sowing the grain which shall yield this harvest; the collection by other ants of grass to manure the soil on which there subsequently grows a species of fungus upon which they feed; the military organization of the ecitons of Central America; and so forth. Now, the description of the habits of ants forms one of the most interesting chapters in natural history. But to class them all as illustrations of instinct is a survival of an old-fashioned method of treatment.