RECORD: Darwin, C. R. n.d. I felt at first a little sceptical on this head but this was unreasonable. CUL-DAR205.11.106. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 1.2023. RN1

NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volume CUL-DAR205.11 contains notes on Instinct, change in habit.

This note is also transcribed in Natural selection, pp. 574-5.


[106]

*I felt at first a little sceptical on this head; but this was unreasonable, for how could the hosts fight, if those on the same side did not Know each other? Nevertheless to try this, I took several times some hill-ants (F. rufa) from their own nest & placed them on another; they were always extremely much agitated & were instantaneously attacked by the inhabitants: whereas when I returned several of the same lots to their own nest, they seemed immediately to recognize their comrades & be recognized by them. In Moor Park, near Farnham, there is an enormous nest, asserted by the county-people to have existed in the same spot, during their whole lives, for at least forty years & inhabited by sl should think, some hundreds of thousands of ants; & yet there as in the case of smaller nests, immediately recognised & attacked a stranger of the same species. Some ants, which I kept for 19 hours in a bottle & then put back in their own nest were not attacked though some were threatened: the bottle used in this case smell of physic, & the ants must have been thus scented, & as they were not withstanding thus recognised by their comrades, it would appear that the recognition is not owing to all the ants of the same nest, having a common odour.— Ch. 10


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Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

File last updated 14 March, 2023