2IO 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



j&m $& ^^s^^e 



;^^*&r&^ 



The Western Harvesting Ants. 



BY SARI, I ( YNU JOHNSTON, FORT LUPTON, 

 COLORADO. 



On the dry and level treeless plains, 

 whose monotony is seldom broken, the 

 sight of which seems to so many people 

 tiresome, the hills of these ants dot 

 the landscape so abundantly in many 

 places that the most inattentive person's 

 eye must stop and rest upon them if 

 only just for a glance. My first glimpse 

 of the western prairies also brought to 

 me my first view of the homes of these 

 ants. 



With the piles of earth our eastern 

 species of ants threw up I was familiar ; 

 but such ant hills I had never seen be- 



circumference and cleared of all vegeta- 

 tion. 



The hills are from eighteen to thirty 

 inches high and perfect cones save 

 on one side where, frequently, the base- 

 is elongated making an ellipse, or 

 wdierc a small depression as though a 

 saucer had been sunk in it and the im- 

 print had remained. In the center of 

 this, which is one to four inches deep, 

 is the entrance to the nest. In looking- 

 at one hundred of these nests I found 

 all of them shaped like the above and 

 ninety-nine of them with the entrance 

 on the south, east or southeast. 



When the cold days of fall arrive one 

 may see the ants busily engaged in 





A PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDY OF ANT MOUNDS. 



fore. diev 



and a 

 dow. 



As soon as 

 near Greeley, 

 one of these 



were large and prominent 

 ooked white from the car win- 



I conld, after arriving 

 Colorado, 1 examined 

 nils more closely and 

 found that their prominence was due 

 to the fact that they were a graveled 

 covered hill in the midst of a circular 

 piece of ground, eight to fifteen feet in 



inspecting their nests. They carry gra- 

 vel and otherwise fix it up for the win- 

 ter. At this season of the year, fre- 

 quently, near the base one may see a 

 layer of chaff which is the refuse from 

 seeds stored for the winter. 



The hills an more numerous in some 

 sections than in others. 1 do not know 

 what governs this. T can venture a 

 guess that the lower level portions of 



