168 SUPPLEMENT TO 



during the summer months might supply further con- 

 firmation. 



It would be of interest to learn the extent and 

 manner of concealment of these large stores of grain, 

 but, during the months from October to May, I have 

 never seen corn in any quantity in the granaries, 

 though there was frequent evidence of its late pre- 

 sence in the dense masses of husks of oats and other 

 large grain lying near the nests. In October, 1873, 1 

 found near the entrances to a nest of structor a circular 

 mound formed of this refuse, twenty-seven inches in 

 diameter, and averaging two inches in thickness, while 

 near other nests I have found the chinks between 

 the stones of the terrace-wall behind which the nest 

 lay, literally stuffed with husks. It was plain that 

 these grains of cereals and the larger grasses had been 

 collected during the summer. The granaries in the 

 winter and spring contain the grains of some few of 

 the autumnal grasses, but are principally filled with 

 seeds of the other more abundant autumn-fruiting 

 plants belonging to the neighbourhood. 



I have now collected from the granaries of these 

 ants the seeds or small dry fruits of fifty-four distinct 

 species of wild plants, and on examination I find that 

 during my stay in the south (from October to May) 

 the seeds of the distinctively spring and sutnmer- 

 flowering plants are either entirely absent or are very 

 scarce, while the great bulk of the seeds belong to 

 plants which ripen their fruits in the autumn. 

 Thus the grains of oats, of the large fescue and brome 

 grasses, of quaking grasses [Melica), and other kinds 

 conmion near the nests in May, are conspicuously 

 absent in the winter, as are the fruits of all the sedges 



