HORTICULTURISTS 217 



Wheeler says that exploration of the nests in winter 

 reveals many granaries in which the garnered seeds 

 have sprouted. 



*' Sometimes, in fact, the chambers are literally 

 stuffed with dense wads of seedhng grasses and 

 other plants. On sunny days the ants may often 

 be seen removing these seeds when they have 

 sprouted too far to be fit for food, and carrying 

 them to the refuse-heap, which is always at the 

 periphery of the crater or cleared earthen disc. 

 Here the seeds, thus rejected as inedible, often 

 take root, and in the spring form an arc or a com- 

 plete circle of growing plants around the nest. 

 Since the ant feeds largely, though by no means 

 exclusively, on grass seeds, and since, moreover, 

 the seeds of Aristida are a very common and favourite 

 article of food, it is easy to see why this grass should 

 predominate in the circle." 



Long before the discovery of these American 

 and European harvesters, however. Colonel Sykes 

 had announced an Indian ant, which he named 

 Atta (now Pheidole) providens, that had somewhat 

 similar habits. At Poona he saw these Ants in 

 January and February storing up the seeds (then 

 ripe) of a species of grass which they took into their 

 nests, and in June and October he saw them bringing 

 up these seeds from their stores and exposing them 

 to the sun in heaps as big as a handful, apparently 

 for the purpose of drying them after being wetted 

 by the rains of the monsoon. He communicated 

 his discovery to the Entomological Society of 



