In considering such organisms as ants and bees, however, we must be careful to avoid the error of supposing that, because they happen to have no backbones, they are necessarily low in the scale of life and intelligence. The tree of life has many branches, and, according to the theory of evolution, these divergent branches have been growing up side by side. There is no reason whatever why the bee and the ant, in their branch of life, should not have attained as high a development of structure and intelligence as the elephant or the dog in their branch of life. I do not say that they have. As it is difficult to compare their structure, in complexity and efficiency, with that of vertebrates, so is it difficult to compare their intelligence. The mere matter of size may have necessitated the condensation of intelligence into instinct in a far higher degree than was required in the big-brained mammals. Still, their intelligence, though of a different order and on a different plane, may well be as high. And Darwin has said that the so-called brain of the ant may perhaps be regarded as the most wonderful piece of matter in the world. That ants have some power of communication seems to be proved by the interesting experiments of Sir John Lubbock. He found that they could carry information to the nest of the presence of larvæ, and that the greater the number of larvæ to be fetched, the greater the number of ants brought out to fetch them in a given time. On one occasion Sir John Lubbock put an ant to some larvæ. "She examined them carefully, and went home without taking one. At this time no other ants were out of the nest. In less than a minute she came out again with eight friends, and the little group made straight for the heap of larvæ. When they had gone two-thirds of the way, I imprisoned the marked ant; the others hesitated a few minutes, and then, with curious quickness, returned home." This is only one observation out of many; and it shows (1) that since the marked ant took no larva home, she must have given information which led the others to come out--unless we can suppose that the smell of the larvæ she had examined still hung about her; and (2) that the communication was not detailed, and probably was no more than "Come," for, when the leader of the party was removed, the rest knew not[GR] where to go--very possibly knew not why they had been summoned.