We know well enough what forms the main material of thought with bees and flies, and that is visible objects. For you must think about _something_ if you think at all; and you can hardly imagine a contemplative blow-fly setting itself down to reflect, like a Hindu devotee, on the syllable Om, or on the oneness of existence. Abstract ideas are not likely to play a large part in apian consciousness. A bee has a very perfect eye, and with this eye it can see not only form, but also colour, as Sir John Lubbock's experiments have shown us. The information which it gets through its eye, coupled with other ideas derived from touch, smell, and taste, no doubt makes up the main thinkable and knowable universe as it reveals itself to the apian intelligence. To ourselves and to bees alike the world is, on the whole, a coloured picture, with the notions of distance and solidity thrown in by touch and muscular effort; but sight undoubtedly plays the first part in forming our total conception of things generally. What, however, forms the thinkable universe of these little ants running to and fro so eagerly at my feet? That is a question which used long to puzzle me in my afternoon walks. The ant has a brain and an intelligence, but that brain and that intelligence must have been developed out of _something_. _Ex nihilo nihil fit._ You cannot think and know if you have nothing to think about. The intelligence of the bee and the fly was evolved in the course of their flying about and looking at things: the more they flew, and the more they saw, the more they knew; and the more brain they got to think with. But the ant does not generally fly, and, as with most comparatively unlocomotive animals, its sight is bad. True, the winged males and females have retained in part the usual sharp eyes of their class--for they are first cousins to the bees--and they also possess three little eyelets or _ocelli_, which are wanting to the wingless neuters. Without these they would never have found one another in their courtship, and they would have run their heads against the nearest tree, or rushed down the gaping throat of the first expectant swallow, and so effectually extinguished their race. Flying animals cannot do without eyes, and they always possess the most highly developed vision of any living creatures. But the wingless neuters are almost blind--in some species quite so; and Sir John Lubbock has shown that their appreciation of colour is mostly confined to an aversion to red light, and a comparative endurance of blue. Moreover, they are apparently deaf, and most of their other senses seem little developed. What can be the raw material on which that pin's head of a brain sets itself working? For, small as it is, it is a wonderful organ of intellect; and though Sir John Lubbock has shown us all too decisively that the originality and inventive genius of ants have been sadly overrated by Solomon and