4 HARVESTING ANTS, 



As I listened, the question occurred to me whether 

 the ants, which I had observed carrying seeds to their 

 nests at Mentone, might not be unconscious agents 

 on a small scale, both in the distribution and the 

 subterranean storing of seeds. When at a later 

 time I made this suggestion to some of our leading 

 naturalists, I learned with considerable surprise that 

 the unanimous opinion of our highest modern autho- 

 rities on the subject is opposed to the belief that 

 European ants ever do systematically collect and 

 make provision of seeds, and that the instances of 

 such occurrences in tropical climates remain as isolated 

 thouq-h undoubted facts which it is difficult to ex- 

 plain. 



I was not then aware that towards the middle of 

 last century the ancient belief, dating from the time 

 of Solomon, that ants habitually show forethought 

 and husbandry in the collection of supplies of seeds 

 and grain had begun to be called in question, and 

 that our most able observers, such as Huber, Gould, 

 Kirby and Spence, and at the present day Mr. 

 Frederick Smith, had by close scrutiny of the habits 

 of these creatures proved that, wherever personal 

 investigation had enabled them to put the matter 

 to proof, no trace of harvesting was found.* 



covered belonged to the fauna and flora of the immediate vicinity, and not 

 one of these specimens must needs have come from a distance. See alistvact 

 of his pajjer in Gardener's Chronicle, Feb. 3, 1872, p. 143, and in 'Nature' for 

 June 27, 1872, p. 164. 



* I have myself on many occasions thrown seeds in the track of the com- 

 mon English ants, and my experience was, up to the past summer (1872), 

 similar to that of the above-named naturalists, but I have lately, by the 

 merest chance, become acquainted with a curious exception to this rule. It 

 happened as follows. I was gathering some fresh capsules of the common 

 sweet violet in a garden at Richmond, near London, and in pouring the seeds 



