234 CURIOUS WANT OF INGENUITY 



ants exhibited an amount of blundering and apparent stupidity, 

 contrasting strangely with their usual ingenuity. 



On walking along an avenue of plane trees that extends for 

 some distance along the Valdu Carei at INIentone, at the time of 

 year when the large bails on the trees are breaking up and scatter- 

 ing the living litde achenes over the road, some of these appeared, 

 at a hasty glance, to be walking about, but on closer observation 

 it was immediately seen that they v/ere being transported by ants 

 (Alta barbara). Tracing them to the nest I found numbers of 

 others lying around the entrance preparatory to being taken inside, 

 while two or three ants were expending an immense amount of 

 time and trouble in endeavouring to drag one of them down in 

 the only way which could present any difficulty, and that difficulty 

 a very considerable one. 



Although the form of these achenes is doubtless well-known 

 to most of my readers, it may be as well to describe them before 

 going further. They are conical in shape and attached to the 

 receptacle by their narrow end, this form being due to the manner 

 in which they are closely packed together into round balls. A 

 pappus of soft hairs, slightly shorter than the achene, springs from 

 the narrow end or base, and these, before the balls of fruit break 

 up, are folded around the achene, so that after the latter is set free, 

 the pappus hairs still remain more or less reflected over the achene, 

 thus resembling in position the ribs of a half-expanded umbrella. 

 The likeness to an umbrella is further increased by the remains of 

 the pointed style at the broad or upper end, which being frequently 

 curved fairly represents the handle. On the broad part are 

 arranged a number of branched or irregularly stellate hairs. 

 These, together with the hairs of the pappus, form pretty polari- 

 scope objects if mounted in balsam, but what their use is, it is 

 difficult to imagine, unless they help to hold the various achenes 

 together in some manner before the clusters break up. 



Such being the structure of the achenes, it would obviously be 

 a very simple matter for the ants to take them underground, if they 

 were pushed into their nests with the narrow end downwards, as 

 then the hairs of the pappus would merely close round the achene 

 and offer no obstacle. But this is just what the ants do not do. 

 Instead of that, they try to pull them in with the broad end 



