16 HARVESTING ANTS. 



the other red-lieaded ; Jlfa strucfor, a creature very 

 similar to harhara, but of a claret-brown colour ; and 

 a minute yellow ant, the large workers of which have 

 gigantic heads, named Pheidole (or Atta) megacepliala. 



My renewed observations at Mentone were carried 

 on from October, 1871, to May, 1S72, and I was 

 able during that interval to become a frequent 

 visitor to a warm and sheltered valley, which lay but 

 a few minutes' walk from the house in which 1 lived, 

 and in which thirty nests of the most active of the 

 seed-storing ants were to be found. 



Full therefore of my intention to resolve this 

 difficulty if possible, I set out on October 29, 1871, 

 immediately after my return to Mentone, to revisit 

 this valley, where, in the previous May, I had seen 

 the ants busily engaged in cutting, carrying, and 

 sorting their harvest. ' 



The spot in question was a rough slope of soft 

 sandstone rock, with accumulations of sandy soil in 

 the hollows, covered with a sparse and scrubby 

 vegetation, composed of Cistiis {C. sahifolms), pot- 

 herb thyme, black lavender {Lavandula stadias), 

 spiny broom {Cahjcofome spinosa), overshadowed here 

 and there by a few scattered stone and maritime 

 pines, and intermixed with coarse grasses and some 

 smaller plants. 



Cultivated lemon terraces lay on the edge of the 

 wild ground lower down in the valle}^, and at this 

 season, as also in the late spring, these terraces were 

 overgrown with a rank crop of weeds, most of which 

 were in seed. 



I had scarcely set foot on the garrigue, as this kind 

 of wild ground is called, to distinguish it from 



