36 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 1 



people have had to place their beds, during the summer months, upon 

 panes of glass covered with vaseline in order to pass the night in 

 peace. There have been rumored cases of infants being killed by these 

 ants, but so extreme a case has not come within my observation. 

 That such might easily occur is not at all improbable. A neighbor of 

 mine was awakened one night the past summer by the cries of an 

 infant, about two months of age, lying in its cradle near at hand. 

 Thousands of these ants were crawling over the child 's body and into 

 mouth and nostrils. It was necessary to repeatedly submerge the 

 infant in a tub of water before all the persistent workers could be 

 disposed of. Had the child not received immediate attention the 

 consequences would doubtless have been serious. 



The Argentine ant is particularly fond of the honey-dew secreted 

 by Aphids and various scale insects, and in all localities the increase 

 of Coccidae and Aphididae following the increase of these ants has 

 been almost beyond belief. Many thousands of ornamental trees and 

 plants in New Orleans have already been destroyed by scale-insects. 

 Many complaints are also received that the workers eat into the 

 petals and calyces of flowers of various kinds, and indeed it has now 

 become almost impossible to produce cut flowers with profit in the 

 city of New Orleans. 



During the past autumn I have noticed the workers of this species 

 assiduously attending the ordinary cotton plant-lice, apparently colon- 

 izing them upon the younger foliage. The cotton-louse is a species 

 which is usually brought fully under control by natural enemies after 

 the middle of June, but should this ant succeed in facilitating their 

 increase during the summer and autumn these Aphids may come prom- 

 inently to the front as enemies of the cotton crop. 



As a direct enemy to fruit the ant is also important. At Audubon 

 Park the past spring the entire prospective orange crop was de- 

 stroyed by them, the workers eating into the opening fruit buds. 

 Many complaints of this injury to oranges were reported to us from 

 the lower Mississippi River and coast regions. The fig crop in the 

 vicinity of New Orleans was this year almost entirely destroyed by 

 them. The following, quoted from the New Orleans Times-Democrat 

 of July 7, 1907, is not overdrawn: "The time of the ripening of the 

 figs has come and the housekeepers have to watch the rich harvest of 

 figs falling to earth day after day in their green immaturity from the 

 beautiful trees that are so ant-infested it is almost impossible to pick 

 the few that do ripen. The trees themselves are making a noble fijht, 

 but they will be conquered in the end, because the hordes that attack 

 them are illimitable and possess a high intelligence simply marvelous 

 when with our feeble human efforts we try to over-reach them." 



