the data given, is necessarily indicative of a particular object. All of them may be emotional expressions of satisfaction, discontent, alarm, apprehension, and so forth. In any case, there is no evidence for that intentional employment of sounds, to the realized end of intercommunication, which would involve the exercise of an incipient rational faculty. Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess are based on direct association, and refer to the here and the now. A dog may be able to suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat; but can a dog tell his neighbour of the delightful worry he enjoyed the day before yesterday in the garden where the man with the biscuit-tin lives? Probably not, bark he never so expressively. Although some anecdotes are commonly interpreted as affording evidence of descriptive intercommunication among animals, we need the decisive results of experiment before this view can be unreservedly accepted. Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, made careful experiments with ants, and discusses the question with his customary lucidity and impartiality. “Much of what has been said,” he writes,[84] “as to the powers of communication possessed by bees and ants depends on the fact that if one of them in the course of her rambles has discovered a supply of food, a number of others soon find their way to the store. This, however, does not necessarily imply any power of describing localities. If the ants merely follow a more fortunate companion, or if they hunt her by scent, the matter is comparatively simple; if, on the contrary, the others have the route described to them, the case becomes very different.” Experiments were therefore made to decide the question. For example, when an ant returned from the discovered store of food to the nest, and then emerged with a following of other ants, she was taken up on a slip of paper and transferred to the food. The followers, thus deprived of their leader, in nearly all cases failed to find the store. “I conclude, then,” says Lord Avebury, “that when large numbers of ants come to food they follow one another, being also, to a large extent, guided by scent. The fact, therefore, does not imply any considerable power of intercommunication.” There are, moreover, some circumstances which seem to strengthen this conclusion. For instance, “if a number of slave-ants are put in a box, and if in one corner a dark place of retreat be provided for them, with some earth, one soon finds her way to it. She then comes out again, and going up to one of the others, takes her by the jaws and carries her to the place of shelter. They then both repeat the same manœuvre with other ants, and so on until all their companions are collected together. Now, it seems difficult to imagine that so slow a course would be adopted, if they possessed any power of communicating description.”