ANENT ANTS. 261 



study the ways of her " who, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, pro- 

 videth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the har- 

 vests," was a figure drawn from careless observation ; that ants, being 

 carnivorous insects, would not eat dry, hard grains of wheat or bar- 

 ley, the idea that they would do so having arisen from mistaking the 

 whitish cocoons which inclose the pupae for grains of wheat, to which 

 tliey bear a resemblance. But Mr. Traherne Moggridge has recently, 

 by careful observation in the south of Europe, confirmed in many of 

 their minutest details tlie accounts given by ancient writers, and shown 

 that, in ti'eating these accounts with contempt, it is the modern au- 

 thors who have been guilty of forming hasty conclusions from insufla- 

 cient data. 



The ants were described as ascending the stalks of cereals and 

 gnawing ofi" the grains, while others below detached the seed from 

 the chaff and carried it h(?me ; as gnawing ofi" the radicle to pre- 

 vent germination, and spreading their stores in the sun to dry after 

 wet weather. These statements Mr. Moggridge has verified, supple- 

 menting them by discovering the granaries in which they are stored, 

 sometimes excavated in solid rock. He has seen them in the act of 

 collecting seeds, and has traced seeds to the granaries ; he has seen 

 them bring out the grains to dry after a rain, and nibble ofi" the radi- 

 cle from those which were germinating ; lastly, he has seen them feed, 

 on the seeds so collected. A curious point is, that the collections of 

 seeds, although stored in damp situations, very rarely germinate ; yet 

 nothing has been done to deprive them of vitality, for, on being sown, 

 they grow vigorously. Their depredations are of such extent as must 

 cause serious loss to cultivators. 



Texas and Northern Mexico furnish a remarkable species in the 

 honey-making ants {^Myrmecocystxis Mexicanus). The workers of 

 their communities are divided into three classes : 1. Yellow workers, 

 nurses and feeders ; 2. Yellow workers, honey-makers ; 3. Black work- 

 ers, guards and purveyors. 



The site chosen for their nest is usually some sandy soil in the 

 neighborhood of shrubs and flowers, the space occupied being four or 

 five feet square. The black workers surround the nests as guards, and 

 are always in a state of great activity. They form two lines of de- 

 fense, moving dififerent ways, their march always being along three 

 sides of a square ; one column moving from the southeast to the south- 

 west corners of the fortification, while the other proceeds in the oppo- 

 site direction. Most of the nests lie open to the south ; the east, west, 

 and northern sides, being surrounded by the soldiers. In case of an 

 enemy approaching, a number of guards sally forth to meet the in- 

 truder. Spiders, wasps, beetles, and other insects are, if they come 

 too near the hive, savagely attacked, and the dead bodies speedily 

 removed from the neighborhood, the soldiers at once resuming their 

 places in the line. 



