As I had not time to watch the Ants for whole afternoons, I asked my granddaughter Lucie, a little rogue who likes to hear my stories of the Ants, to help me. She had been present at the great battle between the Reds and the Blacks and was much impressed by the stealing of the long-clothes babies, and she was willing to wander about the garden when the weather was fine, keeping an eye on the Red Ants for me.
One day, while I was working in my study, there came a banging at my door.
“It’s I, Lucie! Come quick: the Reds have gone into the Blacks’ house. Come quick!”
“And do you know the road they took?”
“Yes, I marked it.”
“What! Marked it? And how?”
“I did what Hop-o’-My-Thumb did: I scattered little white stones along the road.”
I hurried out. Things had happened as my six-year-old helper had said. The Ants had made their raid and were returning along the track of telltale pebbles. When I took some of them up on a leaf and set them a few feet away from the path, they were lost. The Ant relies on her sight and her memory for places to guide her home. Even when her raids to the same ant-hill are two or three days apart, she follows exactly the same path each time. The memory of an Ant! What can that be? Is it like ours? I do not know; but I do know that, though closely related to the Bee, she has not the same sense of direction that the Bee possesses.