Wasps, Bees, and Ants 



543 



(unfit for food) from the nest, and dropping them at the edge of the cleared 

 circle, results in a kind of unintentional planting of grain and grass, and as 

 Aristida seeds make up an exceptionally large part of the food-stores, a 

 majority of the plants in the ring about the nest may often be Aristida. A 

 common Californian agricultural ant, P. subdentatus , found abundantly by 

 Professor Heath at Monterey, is a splendid fighter as well as provident grain- 

 storer, its stings being declared 

 by Heath to be more painful than 

 those of the honey-bee. 



Eciton, the driver-ant, a genus 

 long famous for the marauding 

 and pillaging habits of certain 

 Brazilian species in these 

 marches the great procession is 

 said to be marshaled by big- 

 headed officers and led by scouts! 

 is represented in the south- 

 western part of our country by a 

 few species, E. caecum, E. schmitti, 

 E. opacithercB, and others. 

 These show in their life the char- 

 acteristic habit of indulging in 

 maurauding expeditions to the 

 nests of other ants for the pur- 

 pose of seizing and carrying off 

 the larvae and pupae, which are 

 used for food by the Ecitons. 



Not all the booty is devoured FlG ?48 ._ S hed-nest of Cremastogaster lineolata, 

 at once; some of it may be stored 18 inches long by 12 inches in circumference, 

 in the Eciton nest (which is taken several feet from the ground in a bur- 

 row in Hyde County, North Carolina; this ant 



usually but a temporary habita- usually nests under sticks and logs. (After 

 tion) and gradually used through Atkinson.) 

 several days after the expedition. 



The Ecitons are restless ants, and have a great predilection for moving about 

 on long marches or migrations. On these marches they carry with them stored 

 booty, which may consist of the dead bodies of various small insects, as well 

 as the living larvae and pupae of pillaged ant communities. The nests of 

 Eciton are entirely subterranean, and are usually simply a cavity, partly 

 natural, partly dug out by the ants under some sheltering stone or other 

 object lying in the ground. The males and females differ remarkably from 

 the workers and from each other in appearance, so much so indeed that the 

 few sexual Eciton forms that have already been discovered have mostly been 



