ANTS. 117 



must have been mistaken whenever their experience was uncon- 

 firmed by our own observations) that tliey had mistaken the pupae 

 for corn ; for any one who has purposely or accidentally dug into an 

 ant-hill knows that the workers immediately seize upon the pupse, 

 and endeavour to remove them to a place of safety. More cautious 

 writers, however, thought it possible that ants might really store 

 up grain in some countries, though perhaps not in our own; a 

 view that has since been abundantly substantiated by the observa- 

 tions of many excellent naturalists in all the warmer parts of the 

 globe. Lieut.-Colonel Sykes first recorded the harvesting habits 

 of an Indian ant (which he named Atta Providens, but which is now 

 placed in the allied genus Pheidole, Westw., in the first volume of 

 the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, published 

 in 1836; and Mr. H. W. Bates and others have observed the same 

 thing in various parts of tropical America. But the most com- 

 plete and important observations on the subject have been published 

 by Mr. J. T. Moggridge, in his Harvesting Ants and Trap-door 

 Spiders, and by Rev. Dr. M'Cook, in his Natural History of the 

 Agricultural Ant of Texas. 



All the true harvesting ants yet observed appear to belong to 

 the genus Atta, St. Farg., or to closely-allied genera. There are 

 two orders of workers among them, large and small, generally 

 destitute of ocelli, though the large workers, which are remarkable 

 for their enormous heads, occasionally have one only. 



The ants observed by Mr. Moggridge as storing up grain were 

 chiefly Atta Barbara, Linn., a black ant, sometimes with a red 

 head, and A. Strudor, Latr., which is of a reddish-brown colour. 

 They are common all round the Mediterranean, and he obser\ed 

 no less than fifty-four different species of seeds in their granaries, 

 where they are laid up, carefully cleansed from the husks, which 

 are thrown away (even seed-capsules being often detached and 

 carried into the nest), and submitted to some treatment which still 

 requires explanation, which, without destroying their vitality, 

 prevents their germinating as long as they are in the nest. These 

 ants do not appear to visit Aphidce, or take them to their nests, 

 though they will feed on other insects at times. Sometimes two 

 nests will go to war, the weaker nest being perhaps ultimately 

 deserted. In one case Mr. Moggridge observed a war between 

 two nests, which lasted from January 18 to March 4, with scarcely 

 any intermission. 



A yet more interesting species is the Agricultural Ant of 



