Friends and Foes 263 



orange, lemon, etc. — except the lime, would be very 

 quickly destroyed if they were left without the help and 

 protection of man. The lime has run wild, and seems to 

 be less liked by the ants than the orange and lemon, whose 

 leaves they *'cut up into sixpences" when they have the 

 opportunity, leaving nothing but rags behind them. They 

 are terrible enemies to young plantations, nurseries, and 

 gardens; but they greatly fear the small ants which pro- 

 tect certain plants. 



The agricultural ant of Texas occupies a different 

 position from that of the leaf-cutter, for she is really an 

 agriculturist on her own account, and the only one in the 

 animal world, so far as we know. She is no more an 

 enemy to vegetation, therefore, than the farmer who cuts 

 down "bush" that he may grow wheat, for she does a 

 precisely similar thing. 



It is unfortunate for the farmer, of course, when her 

 "bush" chances to be his corn or sweet potatoes, which 

 she cuts down as ruthlessly as he does scrub; or when she 

 decides that his young fruit-trees must be stripped of their 

 leaves because they keep off too much of the sunshine 

 from her domain. But she does not plunder his crops for 

 food, and she does grow and tend and reap crops of her 

 own as regularly and carefully as he does himself. 



For this purpose, at least partly, she makes circular 

 clearings some ten or twelve feet in diameter, sometimes 

 in rough, wild pasture, sometimes in the middle of the 

 farmer's fields; and she clears away his cotton or corn 

 just as impartially as she does the weeds, for to her they 

 are weeds. Considering her size, her labors are truly 

 herculean, for she cuts through, with her teeth, stems as 

 thick as a thumb; and by dint of sawing, twisting, pull- 



