1S82.] 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



setts shijiK tdoil fur tin.' iiniiHlMled oues ; and 

 if the griisslioppsrs eat up the crops of Xe- 

 Nebiaska, the loss is made within a few days 

 by the sympathies rS Eastern bretliren. But 

 if e\er a geiKial Eastern destruction of crops 

 should occur, wlio Icnows liul tliese despised 

 arid western |)lains would not l)c fully able to 

 come to our rescue V 



People often suppose that where crops are 

 raised by irri{;ation, the land under culture 

 must necessarily be limited ; but this is not 

 the case. At the very ba.se of the Rocky 

 Mountains most of Ow farmers work forty 

 acre lots ; many one hundred and lifty ; while 

 some are reported as having over three hun- 

 dred acres in wheat. Of course this is noth- 

 ing in comparison with what many Western 

 people have in the more nature-favored n- 

 gions ; but it is very large for artificial work, 

 and quite large enough. 



As we have said, the natural charms of 

 nature-watered lands will ever have the 

 greatest charms for the average man ; but it 

 is a matter of great interest to watch what 

 other places can do and are doing, and this 

 Colorado illustration gives a new one of a 

 a point we now and then make, that, what- 

 ever may be local ills, every part of the worlil 

 has its own advantaues. 



'GO TO THE ANT. 



Rev. Dr. H. C. MoCook, a Presbyterian 

 minister of Philadeliihia who was entertained 

 by Dr. J. A. Ehlcr during the meeting of syn- 

 od in Lancaster, has for years made clus^ 

 study of the ant a specialty. It has been 

 known a long while that an ant exists in New 

 Mexico which secretes honey after some fash- 

 ion. Travelers have told of Indian feasts in 

 which the ant was served up "in her own 

 honey" as a species of animated honey-cell. 

 But there was need of a careful examination 

 of the habits of these ants on the part of 

 same one wlio had the scientific spirit and 

 some training in the observation of insect life. 

 Dr. McCook undertook the long journey from 

 Philadelphia to New Mexico for tlie sole jiur- 

 po.se of playing Paul Pry on the interiors of 

 the honey-ants — the interiors in two senses, 

 for his purpose was not alone accomplished by 

 observing them at work in their underground 

 burrows, or rather in the singular galleries 

 which they drive through soft sandstone rock; 

 it was also necessary to examine their anato- 

 my and lind ont how and by v.'hat organs they 

 secrete the limpid honey. All of which Dr. 

 McCook has done, and curious enough are the 

 habits of thes^■ little favorites of iEsop. The 

 sluggard would hardly profit were he enjoined 

 to go to the honey-ant of the garden of the 

 Gods {Mi/rmecocystufs horticsdeorum). Could 

 he see the galleries made specially for those 

 ants winch secrete the honey, and note the 

 care taken of them by the worker ants, and 

 witness the absolute quiet in which these 

 honey makers loaf away the entire day and 

 night, the moral would not be what it was in- 

 tended. He would regard with envy the 

 swollen crop of the honey-maker, the assidu- 

 ity of its servants and attendants both to keep 

 it neat and to feed it with fresh honey from 

 the neigliboring oaks, and the laziness with 

 which, when it does move at all it pushes 

 itself or is dragged by the busy workers from 



one gallery to anotli<>r. And even the slender 

 worker might not seem to the sluggard so bad 

 an ant, for none goes out by daylight, and it 

 is only when the sun sets that these peculiar 

 creatures, turning night into day, sally out 

 for food. Hereafter the re\^sed reading will 

 be: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, but not to 

 the Mi/rmecociiatus Iwrlusdcorum/'' 



Ants have been astonishing us now for a 

 a century, and yet there seems no end to the 

 variety of their tricks and performances. Till 

 found ill the Garden of the (fods, it was not 

 supposed tliat the honey ants existed further 

 north than New Mexico. They have been found 

 at Brownsville, Santa Fe. Matamoras and the 

 City of Mexico. Dr. McCook found their 

 nests on the tops of dry ridges in the pictur- 

 esiiue section on the Eau ipii Bouille, Colora- 

 do, called the Garden of the Gods. He fol- 

 lowed them at night, lantern in hand, for 

 several evenings in succession before discov- 

 ering what they fed on. The long train of 

 workers was easily traced to thickets of scrub 

 oaks. Finally, on the third night, they were 

 seen on the oak twigs running from one oak 

 gall to another and sucking a juice secreted 

 by the gall. Each active gall had the larva of 

 the gall fiy within; the ants passed by those 

 from which the in iture insect had escaped. 

 Nests were then laid bare with pick and 

 shovel and the workers caught in the act of 

 feeding the honey bearers. These apparently 

 were of the same breed, even the same cast, 

 as the workers, and only different in the mon- 

 strous swelling of an anterior stomach, which 

 Dr. McCook calls a crop. Like a crop, this 

 part does not digest the honey, it merely dis- 

 tills and purifies it; and worker ants when 

 hungry will go up to a honey ant and ask for 

 honey from its crop, just as a young pigeon is 

 fed from the cro]i of its mother. Among the 

 many plates in this volume, which show the 

 habits and dwellings of the ants so clearly 

 that the story hardly needs the aid of text, 

 we see workers feeding the honey bearers 

 with the contents of their own little crops on 

 returning fr')m a midnight foray, and others 

 taking toll both from the raiders and from the 

 distended hoaey-beareis. These latter arc 

 seen hanging from the rough ceilings of the 

 larger galleries in a half-torpid state, for all 

 the world like single Delaware grapes. Dr. 

 McCook describes them as very light of color, 

 shining and transparent. The honey is sin- 

 gularly pure and liquid. la summer it has a 

 -slight tartness that is very refreshing, but in 

 winter even this is not tasted. The Indians 

 serve them up as a delicacy exactly like very 

 tender fruit. The Mexicans are .said to press 

 the honey bearers exactly as if they were 

 grapes, and even to make a sort of wine or 

 liquor from them. Dr. McCook dissents from 

 another observer who recommends that atten- 

 tion should be given to the ants as honey- 

 producers for the market. Ho is of the opin- 

 ion that the number of honey-bearers is too 

 small in each community. A large colony 

 would not have more than 000, which would 

 yield not more than half a pound. But it is 

 likely that any one who should experiment 

 with them would devise means of doubling 

 the number of lioney-raakers. Dr. McCook's 

 other argument is stronger, namely, that the 

 destruction of insect life involved in obtain- 

 ing the honey will be likely to prejudice peo- 



ple against it. He might have also remem- 

 bered to mention the natural disgust which 

 most people have towards insects like the ant, 

 which are never associated in their minds 

 with food otherwise than as corrupters and 

 pilferer.s. To many people the smell of ants 

 is intensely hateful. 



It would take too much space to follow Dr. 

 McCook in his discoveries of the intimate life 

 of these ants; their care for each other and 

 their occasional utter indifference; their sloth 

 and activity; their ferocity and apparent good 

 temper under provocation. On the whole, 

 the report is extremely in their favor. They 

 are hard-w(U-king, stubborn, long-suffering 

 when other ants run their mines among their 

 galleries, and so prudent in laying up stores 

 of food for a bad day that they actually store 

 it in living kegs, which move, indeed, with 

 dilliculty, but still can drag themselves out of 

 the way of immediate danger. Notwith- 

 standing all the doctor has done, there is yet 

 more to study. Which of the workers are 

 they that begin to get swelled crops and finally 

 take to the honey room? What do the honey 

 bearers look like after several months during 

 which the colony has not stirred abroad? Do 

 they find other honey food beside the galls on 

 the oak? Do the Southern colonies secrete 

 more honey or less? How much of the honey 

 habit is voluntary in the individual? How 

 much cliance? There is no end to the [iroblems 

 before the students of this singular little crea- 

 ture. The second part of the book relates to 

 another Western ant, Pcxjonomiirmcx occidcn- 

 talis, whose fortresses and cleared spaces on 

 the prairies iniirht have fiu'med the models on 

 which some of the earthworks of the mound- 

 builders of the Mississippi valley were arrang- 

 ed. Every night these ants close their gates 

 with large pebbles, thus reversing the habit of 

 the 31iirme(-0cystiis. They are continually 

 attacked by a very minute ant called the 

 Erratic, which fastens on like bull-terriers to 

 an ox, and are greatly dreaded by the large 

 ant. Ants of other species run their burrows 

 into those of the Occidcntalis, "jumping their 

 claims," but the latter do not mind. Even 

 the eggs and larviE of two kinds have been 

 found in one gallery. Dr. McCook has issued 

 a prospectus for a large work on American 

 spiders, to be printed if sufflcieiit subscribers 

 send in their names. 



A GREAT SOUTHERN FARMER. 



Brains will find or make a pathway to suc- 

 cess under any conditions, and brains have 

 been the wealth-creating factor in the case of 

 the large planters. It is by business shrewd- . 

 ness and the economy of wholesale dealings 

 that E. F. Bailey, of Jefferson county, Fla., 

 succeeds in making money, though he has 

 never improved upon the old methods of ciil- 

 tiv.ating his 0,000 acres ; it is by brains that 

 the managers of the Capeheart plantations on 

 Albemarle sound are able to add constantly to 

 the number of their acres, the land added last 

 year being valued at S.52,O0O,- and it is by 

 brains, and not by the mere vastness of his 

 farming operations, that Edward Richardson, 

 of Mississippi, the greatest cotton-raiser in 

 the world, has amassed his immense fortune, 

 now estimated at from Sl.-),000,000 to §20,.- 

 000,000. The means by which Mr. Richard- 

 son has achieved phenomenal success as a 



