HARVESTING ANTS 15 



yields its burden to other workers whose office it is to 

 receive the seeds, strip them of their husks, and eject 

 the useless chaff on to the neighbouring refuse heap. 

 The ants are not very particular as to the nature of 

 the seeds they select for storage. I have collected 

 twenty different kinds of seeds garnered by this 

 harvester. Nor do they always confine themselves 

 to nutritious seeds, for on an almost barren hillside 

 I have seen them collecting dried fragments of grass, 

 more, I suspect, from the force of instinct compelling 

 them to collect something rather than from any value 

 they could derive from the grass. I have watched 

 them storing the pith of the Indian corn which could 

 scarcely have any nutritious value. On one occasion 

 I observed them selecting their harvest from a heap 

 of bird-droppings, and often they explore a pile of 

 horse-dung, which they tear to pieces, transporting 

 the half-digested fragments to their home. They 

 occasionally gather insects to the nest. Termites, the 

 legitimate prey of almost every living creature, are 

 eagerly seized, lodged in the formicary, and the wings, 

 like the husks and chaff of the seeds, are thrown out 

 on the refuse heap. To most ants the Termites are a 

 tasty morsel. MacCook has observed the agricultural 

 ant of Texas, which also stores nutritious seeds, bearing 

 to the nest such numbers of Termites that "the vesti- 

 bule became choked, and a mass of struggling anthood 

 was piled up around the gate." 



The conveyance of the seed is a great labour, but a 

 still more difficult duty for the harvester is to grasp 

 the seed in such a manner as to make it suitable for 

 transport. The seed must be held by one extremity 

 so that its bulk is directed forwards in front of the 



