LEAF-CUTTING ANTS 



When it is required for food germination is permitted, 

 but is soon stopped : the ants nibble off the growing rootlet 

 of the seed. Then when the grain absorbs water and begins 

 to change its starch into sugar, the ants suck in the sugar 

 and reap the reward of all this labour and skill. 



In the conduct of this germination of the grain they are, 

 of course, far in advance of all the savage races of mankind. 



There are certain South American species which go at 

 least one step farther. They have their own fields — spaces 

 three or four feet in diameter — which are entirely occupied 

 by one single grass, the so-called Ant-rice (Aristida stricta). 

 Dr. Lincecum states that the ants " work ^ these plantations 

 very carefully, removing every weed or other plant that 

 comes up, and sowing every year the new seed at the proper 

 season.^ 



These facts are sufficiently strange and startling, but there 

 are even, apparently, species still more intelligent, who not 

 only sow and reap, but actually prepare a soil and reap 

 a crop of mushrooms, or at least, if not of mushrooms, of 

 fungi. These wonderful little insects gather leaves and cut 

 them into fragments of an appropriate size ; they are then 

 collected together so as to form a bed, and the fungus is 

 introduced to this. The fungus is kept at a certain stage of 

 growth by very careful treatment ; the fruit-bearing ends 

 are nibbled off, so that the young shoots come up indefinitely. 

 The ants feed upon these fungus shoots, and get a crop in- 

 definitely prolonged. 



This is, of course, a system of agriculture far beyond that 

 employed by any tribe of savages. Only man in a relatively 

 advanced stage of agriculture grows mushrooms for himself. 



^ Proceedings Linnean Society^ 1861. Dr. Mac Cook adds nothing 

 essential, and in no way disproves Dr. Linoecum's statements. 



285 



