152 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST ' 



them, he may fail to discover that the ants are not content 

 merely to build up symmetrical hills; they finish the job by 

 covering the exterior with more or less ornamental material. 

 Sometimes this consists of the fat, cylindrical leaves of the 

 grease wood, or the berries from the one-seeded juniper, or of 

 small stones. To obtain these ornaments, the ants apparently 

 often travel considerable distances. When new materials are 

 presented, the intelligent insects are n(jt slow to take advantage 

 of them. In the garnet beds of northeastern Arizona, the ant 

 hills are literally covered with garnets, a fact well known to 

 the Navajo, who secures his supplies by robbing the ants. In 

 Laguna Canyon, also in Arizona, a still different variety of 

 ornament was seen. Here a hill was entirely covered with the 

 shells of small water snails, though located in a most arid spot. 

 It seems the canyon once contained a lake with the usual com- 

 plement of animal life, and the snail shells were left in a layer 

 of peat some distance below the surface. The ants in their 

 tunneling had evidently reached this layer and utilized the 

 shells in place of more common material. ,The writer tried to 

 make the conchologist of the party believe the shells repre- 

 sented an ant's kitchen midden, but without much success. 



WiNKUNG Mary-Buds. — Referring to the quotation 

 from The American Botanist in the January issue as to 

 whether Shakespeare's ''Winking Mary-buds" meant marigold 

 or Buttercup, it wcnild appear that the writer c»verlooked the 

 Corn Marigold, which in some parts of Shakespear's country 

 is as comnKJii as the Corn Poppy; this is known as Chrysan- 

 themum segetum, which has a variety e(iually common, separa- 

 ted in some works as (jrandiflornin, and which has flowers as 

 large as the Calendida. 1 venture to suggest that if Shake- 

 speare meant marigold at all it would be the ab(n'e rather than 

 Caltha palnstris. — Arthur Smith in Gardeners' Chronicle 



