HAR VESTING ANTS. 9 



tropical countries, for he says,* " Certainly the Indian 

 ant is also a wise creature They leave one open- 

 ing at the top (of the nest), by which they have their 

 exits and entrances, when they come bearing the seeds 

 which they collect." I have never myself found seeds 

 bored through the centre in the way recorded above, 

 but it is possible that different species of ants may 

 treat the seeds in other ways than those observed by 

 me ; or, on the other hand, ^lian may have mistaken 

 the gnawing off the radicle of the seed, a process which 

 I shall describe from personal observation below, and 

 imagined that the seed itself was pierced. ^ 



Aldrovandus, writing in the sixteenth century, 

 speaksf of the ants as storing seed and of their gnaw- 

 ing, " illud principium sen acumen grani, e quo germen 

 emitti a tritico solet" — that is to say, the radicle. But it 

 is not clear whether Aldrovandus treats of what he has 

 himself seen or refers to the account given by a cer- 

 tain Bishop, Simon Mariolus, who, he says " in his 

 most pleasant and learned work, introduces a philo- 

 sopher as taking his walks abroad and examining an 

 ant's nest with its seed store," &c. 



The lively fable of the ant and the grasshopper, as 

 related by La Fontaine, has done much towards fami- 

 liarizing and keeping alive in the minds of many of 

 us the idea that ants habitually provide stores against 

 the winter ; but we must not infer from this narration 

 that the witty French author had ever cared to exa- 

 mine for himself whether the fable, which he borrowed 

 from ^sop, had its foundation in fact or not. The 



* Id. lib. xvi. 15. 

 I Aldrovandus, De Insectis, lib. v. (de Forinicis). 



