HAEVESTING ANTS. 105 



porter dodges under a too nai-row opening. She backs out and 

 tries another passage. Now the sharp points of the husk are 

 entangled in the grass. She jerks or pulls the burden loose, and 

 hurries on. The road is reached, and progress is comparatively 

 easy. Holding the grain in her mandibles well above the 

 surface, she breaks into what I may describe with suffi- 

 cient accuracy as ' a trot,' and with little further interruption 

 reaches the disk and disappears within the gate. There are 

 variations from this behaviour, more or less marked, according 

 to the nature of the grounds, the seeds, and (I suppose) the indi 

 viduality of the harvesters ; but the mode of ingathering the 

 crop is substantially as above. Each ant operated independently. 

 Once only did I see anything like an effort to extend sympathy 

 and aid. A worker minor seeming to have difficulty in testing 

 or adjusting a large seed of buffalo-grass, was assisted (ap- 

 parently) by one worker major, and then by another, after 

 which she went on her way. 



But these ants do not confine their harvesting opera- 

 tions to gathering fallen seeds ; they will, like the ants of 

 Europe, also cut seeds from the stalk. 



In order to test the disposition of crudelis to garner the 

 seeds from the stem, bunches of millet were obtained from the 

 North, and stalks eighteen inches high, crowned by the boll of 

 close-set seeds, were stuck in the mound of an active formicary. 

 The ants mounted the stems and set to work vigorously to 

 secure the seeds, clusters of twenty or more being engaged at 

 once upon one head. The seeds were carried off and stored 

 within the nest. This experiment proved pretty conclusively 

 that in the seeding season crudelis does not wait for the seeds 

 to drop, but harvests them from the plant. 



The ' granaries ' into which the seeds are brought are 

 kept distinct from the ' nurseries ' for the pupae. Their 

 walls, floor, and roof are so hard and smooth, that MacCook 

 thinks the insects must practise upon them ' some rude 

 mason's craft.' 



He traced these granaries to a depth of four feet 

 below the surface of the ground, and believes, from the 

 statements of a native peasant, that they, or at least the 

 formicaries, extend to a depth of fifteen feet. 



As regards the care that the ants take of the gathered 

 grain, Lincecum describes the same habit as Moggridge 

 and Sykes describe — viz., the sunning of wet seeds to 



