86 HARVESTING ANTS. 



roll itself into a ball, and at times the larvae of an 

 elater beetle. I have observed- on more than one 

 occasion that when in digging into an ant's nest I 

 have thrown out an elater larva, the ants would clus- 

 ter round it and direct it towards some small opening 

 in the soil, which it would quickly enlarge and disap- 

 pear down. At other times, however, the ants would 

 take no notice of the elater, and it is my belief that 

 the attentions paid to it on former occasions were 

 purely selfish, and that they intended to avail them- 

 selves of the tunnel thus made down into the soil, 

 with a view of reopening communications with the 

 galleries and granaries concealed below, the approaches 

 to which had been covered up. I have frequently 

 watched the ants make use of these passages mined 

 by the elater on these occasions. 



At one time I suspected that the elater larvse 

 might consume the seeds stored by the ants, and I 

 therefore confined some of them in a tumblerful of 

 earth and seeds ; but at the end of three weeks, 

 though the larvse were strong and healthy-looking, I 

 could not detect that any of the seeds had been 

 touched, and even those which had sprouted remained 

 uninjured. I have searched in vain for the beetles 

 and staphylinidse which are known to inhabit certain 

 ant's nests. In one nest I found (on Dec. 28) a 

 quantity of small spherical, egg-like galls, slightly 

 larger than but resembling the fruit of Fumaria 

 cajyreolata, spotted with pink-brown on a yellowish or 

 greyish ground. There was a dark spot at the point 

 at which the mature insect would emerge, and one did 

 escape from the egg-like cocoon while I was watch- 

 ing, and proved to be a Ci/nijjs of very small size, but 

 furnished with a terrible dart for puncturing its prey. 



