ANT COMMUNITIES 



his house, entered his desk drawers, and carried away a 

 portion of his chewing-tobacco before he discovered the 

 robbery. He had to be careful thereafter where he put 

 the delectable weed. At a plantation not far from this 

 nursery I saw an immense column of Attas plundering 

 a granary of wheat, which was being carried away in 

 quantities, grain by grain. This pilfering was also 

 carried on in the daytime. I have no explanation to 

 give of this remarkable difference in habit in the same 

 species, in the same locality, and apparently under the 

 same conditions. Can A tta fervens have entered upon 

 a transition period in its history? 



How do the cutting ants dispose of all this material so 

 laboriously imported into their underground city? Is 

 it used, as with the cutting bee, simply to line the 

 chamber or cells in which the young are reared? Let 

 us see. It was no light undertaking to open and ex- 

 plore a mound occupied and defended by hundreds of 

 thousands of irate ants. But it seemed necessary. 

 Two trenches were made, one ten feet long and five 

 feet deep, and a second at right angles to it wide enough 

 to allow free entrance for study. The number of in- 

 sects that swarmed to defend their home was incalculable. 

 It amazed us to see such hordes of creatures domiciled 

 in one commune. They were, however, not so difficult 

 to manage as when disturbed at their night work, as 

 the swift use of the spade by the assailants and the 

 general convulsion of their emmet world seemed to daze 

 them. But when the author entered the trench to work 

 with trowel, knife, foot-rule, and drawing materials, the 

 ants rallied and attacked so freely that all the help- 

 ers were required to brush them off. The wound in- 

 flicted by them was sharp, but nothing to compare 



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