452 МК. Т. А. DYMES ON THE 
to induce the ants to try their jaws upon а glistening white oleaginous 
strip whenever they come across one; they find much smaller fruits and 
seeds than these, possessing baits of one sort or another, that are barely or 
not at all visible to us. 
Г am of opinion, therefore, that the larval resemblance, which nobody 
could deny, is entirely inoperative and superfluous so far as the ants are 
concerned ; that the idea of its deceiving them is erroneous, and that 
we must not look upon it as an adaptation to dispersal by them *. 
Section V. THE CLAIM то MYRMECOCHORY. 
Г am, however, far from thinking, even if Таш correct in the view that I 
have just expressed, that it disposes of the claim to myrmecochory. That 
claim could conceivably be maintained on other grounds, e. g., the binding of 
the seeds into a single mass by means of а nutritious elaiosome. But if we 
are to consider that the mass is “adapted ? in any way to dispersal by ants, 
we must show, in order to justify the use of that word, that the massing 
confers upon the species an advantage which it would otherwise be without. 
Personally I do not see that it is or can be so, so far as the ants are concerned, 
but rather the reverse. 
We have seen the mass taken into the nest whole and in pieces, but I fail 
to recognize any advantage to the species in either event, unless the work 
done by the plant in binding the seeds together be undone by the ants, and 
the seeds subsequently ejected from the nest ; and then the massing is but 
labour lost. The same argument would apply if it could be proved that the 
ants reduced the mass to single seeds, and then carried them off; it would 
still be a case of misspent energy on the part of the plant f. 
* [t is, nevertheless, possible that it may bear a negative instead of a positive inter- 
pretation ; it might, for example, deter a seed-eater, of one sort or another, from attacking 
what looks so much more like а larva than like any other fruit or seed in our Flora. 
But this is, of course, an assumptiou pure and simple, and, moreover, is one that would 
have to be tested by experiment: one might, for instance, offer the same bird or other 
animal first the mass and subsequently the single seeds, and note the response; if the latter 
were taken and the former left it would suggest a deterrent of some sort, although not 
necessarily in the larval resemblance. 
T The possibility of time being saved in dispersal by the seeds being massed, and so more 
easily found and carried away ten or eleven at а time, must not, however, be overlooked : 
but, since the seeds always, in my many trials and in my garden, lie over the whole winter, 
I do not consider any economy effected in this way a sufficient explanation. Normally, 
the mass breaks up from weathering in a very few days in the open, especially when hot 
sunshine alternates with heavy rain, аз frequently happens in the fruiting months; and 
two or three days, or even a week or more, is not a large economy over a period of nine or 
ten montks. 
