HARVESTING ANTS. 25 



plants, such as fumitory, pellitory. Polygonum avi- 

 culare, and grasses, from seeds taken out of granaries.* 

 I have frequently remarked that it is the seeds last 

 collected before a fall of rain which are brought out 

 in a sprouting condition from the nest ; for T have 

 observed in cases where I had recentl}^ scattered seeds 

 near wild nests, that it is these which are carried out 

 from the nest and placed to dry after a wet night ; and 

 so in the case of a nest which I kept in captivity, when a 

 variety of different seeds had been successively sup- 

 plied to the ants, it was the cabbage, lettuce, and 

 chicory seeds, given the day before the nest was watered, 

 that reappeared after having been carried below, and 

 not the hemp, canary, and mixed seeds of wild plants 

 previously strewed on the nest. It seems possible 

 that the process, whatever it may be, to which the ants 

 subject the seeds which are to remain dormant may 

 require some time, and the construction of the gra- 

 nary chambers is doubtless a long affair, so that when 

 ■unusually large supplies of grain, &c., are brought in 

 by the workers some part of them may not find the 

 necessary accommodation and attention. When the 

 seeds do germinate in the nests, and it is my belief 

 that they are usually softened and made to sprout 

 before they are consumed by the ants, it is very curious 

 to see how the growth is checked in its earliest stage, 

 and how, after the radicle or fibril — the first growing 



* This experiment was tried by me on two occasions, in the former case 

 the seeds were taken from a granary about four inches below the surface of 

 the ground, on November 10th, and sowed two days afterwards, and several 

 of these were up on Dec. 1st. The second trial was made on seeds found at 

 only one and a half inch below the surface, on Dec. 29th, 1871; these were 

 sowed iu England on June 18tli, 1872, and the young plants made their ap- 

 pearance in large numbers ten days afterwards. 



