from the slave-raid, I force an Ant to step on a leaf which I hold out
to her. Without touching her, I carry her two or three paces away from
her regiment: no more than that, but in a southerly direction. It is
enough to put her astray, to make her lose her bearings entirely. I
see the Amazon, now replaced on the ground, wander about at random,
still, I need hardly say, with her booty in her mandibles; I see her
hurry away from her comrades, thinking that she is rejoining them; I
see her retrace her steps, turn aside again, try to the right, try to
the left and grope in a host of directions, without succeeding in
finding her whereabouts. The pugnacious, strong-jawed slave-hunter is
utterly lost two steps away from her party. I have in mind certain
strays who, after half an hour's searching, had not succeeded in
recovering the route and were going farther and farther from it, still
carrying the nymph in their teeth. What became of them? What did they
do with their spoil? I had not the patience to follow those dull-
witted marauders to the end.

Let us repeat the experiment, but place the Amazon to the north. After
more or less prolonged hesitations, after a search now in this
direction, now in that, the Ant succeeds in finding her column. She
knows the locality.

Here, of a surety, is a Hymenopteron deprived of that sense of
direction which other Hymenoptera enjoy. She has in her favour a
memory for places and nothing more. A deviation amounting to two or
three of our strides is enough to make her lose her way and to keep
her from returning to her people, whereas miles across unknown country
will not foil the Mason-bee. I expressed my surprise, just now, that
man was deprived of a wonderful sense wherewith certain animals are
endowed. The enormous distance between the two things compared might