HAEVESTING ANTS. 9T 



present known, practise the peculiar and distinctive 

 habits to be described under this division belong for the 

 most part to one genus, Atta, which, however, comprises a 

 number of species distributed in localised areas over all the 

 four quarters of the globe. Hitherto nineteen species 

 have been detected as having the habits in question. 

 These consist of gathering nutritious seeds of grasses 

 during summer, and storing them in granaries for winter 

 consumption. We owe our present knowledge concerning 

 these insects to Mr. Moggridge,' who studied them in the 

 south of Europe, Dr. Lincecum,^ and Mr. MacCook,^ who 

 studied them in Texas, and Colonel Sykes'' and Dr. Jerdon,^ 

 who made some observations upon them in India. They 

 also occur scattered over a great part of Europe and in 

 Palestine, where they were clearly known to Solomon and 

 other classical writers of antiquity,^ whose claim to accu- 

 rate observation, although long disputed (owing to the 

 authority of Huber), has now been amply vindicated. 



Mr. Moggridge, who was a careful and industrious 

 observer, found the following points of interest in the 

 habits of the European harvesters. From the nest in 

 various directions there proceed outgoing trains, which 

 may be from twenty to thirty or more yards in length, and 

 each consists of a double row of ants, moving, like the 

 leaf-cutting ants, in opposite directions. Those in the 

 outgoing row are empty-handed, while those in the in- 

 coming row are laden. But here the burdens are grass 

 seeds. The roads terminate in the foraging ground, or 

 ant-fields, and the insects composing the columns there 

 become dispersed by hundreds among the seed-yielding 

 grasses. The following is their method of collecting seeds ; 

 I quote from Moggridge : — 



* Harvestiiig Ants and Trap-door Spiders, London, 1873 and Sup- 

 plement, 1874. 



'^ Jownal Linn Sac, vol. vi. p. 29, 1862. 



3 Agricultural Ant of Texas, Philadelphia, 1880 



* Trans. Ent. Soc. Land., i. 103, 1836. 



* Madras Jowrn. Lit. So. 1851. 



8 For this see Moggridge, loc. cit. pp. 6-10, where, besides Prov. iv. 

 6-8, and xxx. 25, quotations are given from Horace, Virgil, Plautus, 

 and others. 



H 



