HARVESTING ANTS. 103 



of Texas, attention was first called to the habits of this 

 insect by Mr. Buckley in I860, 1 and by Dr. Lincecum, 

 who sent an account of his observations to Mr. Darwin, 

 by whom they were communicated to the Linnaean Society 

 in 1861. Five years later a paper was published in the 

 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia from the MS. of Dr. Lincecum. Lastly, in 

 1877 Mr. MacCook went to Texas expressly to study the 

 habits of these insects, and he has recently embodied the 

 results of his observations in a book of three hundred 

 pages. 5 These observations are for the most part confir- 

 matory of those of Lincecum, and for this as well as for 

 reasons to be deduced from the work itself, they deserve 

 to be accepted as trustworthy, notwithstanding that in some 

 cases they are provokingly incomplete. The following is 

 an epitome of these observations. 



The ants clear away all the herbage above their nest in 

 the form of a perfect circle, or 'disk,' 15 or 20 feet in 

 diameter, by carefully felling every stalk of grass or weed 

 that may be growing thereon. As the nests are placed in 

 thickly grown localities, the effect of these bald or shaven 

 disks is highly conspicuous and peculiar, exactly resembling 

 in miniature the clearings which the settlers make in the 

 American backwoods. The disk, however, is not merely 

 cleared of herbage, but also carefully levelled, all inequali- 

 ties of the surface being reduced by building pellets of 

 soil into the hollows to an extent sufficient to make a 

 uniformly flat surface. The action of rain and the constant 

 motion of multitudes of ants cause this flat surface to 

 become hard and smooth. In the centre of the disk is the 

 gateway of the nest. This may be either a simple hole 

 or a hollow cone. 



From the disk in various directions there radiate ant- 

 roads or avenues, which are cleared and smoothed like the 

 disk itself, and which course through the thick surround- 

 ing grass, branching and narrowing as they go till they 

 eventually taper away. These roads are usually three or 

 four in number before they begin to branch, but may be 



1 Proc. Phil. Acad. Nat. Sci., xii. p. 4-45. 



2 Agricultural Ant of Texas (Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia,1880). 



6 



