vii Relations Between Plants and Animals 129 



"These ants seem at first sight to lead the happiest of 

 existences. Protected by their stings, they fear no foe. 

 Habitations full of food are provided for them to commence 

 housekeeping with, and cups of nectar and luscious fruits 

 await them every day. But there is a reverse to the picture. 

 In the dry season on the plains the acacias cease to grow. 

 No young leaves are produced, and the old glands do not 

 secrete honey. Then want and hunger overtake the ants 

 that have revelled in luxury all the wet season ; many of 

 the thorns are depopulated, and only a few ants live through 

 the season of scarcity. As soon, however, as the first rains 

 set in, the trees throw out numerous vigorous shoots, and 

 the ants multiply again with astonishing rapidity." 



A more recent traveller, Professor A. F. W. Schimper, 

 who has reinvestigated the whole matter, has gathered 

 some new facts of much interest, and the student may be 

 referred to Schimper's book 1 not only on its own account, 

 but for the bibliography of the subject which it contains. 



He tells us first of the destructive ravages of the leaf- 

 cutting ants, the sight of whose march soon becomes familiar 

 to the traveller in tropical America. In a minute or two a 

 sixpence-like circle is cut from a leaf and the ant marches 

 off with its burden. Only the dry and the very young leaves 

 are spared, and armies of thousands of ants soon make sad 

 havoc of a tree's foliage. It is not quite certain what the 

 ants do with the leaves which they carry home : Bates 

 believed that they were used as a lining for the subterranean 

 galleries ; Belt supposed that the ants fed upon fungi which 

 grew upon the decaying leaves ; M'Cook observed, in the 

 case of Atta fervens and A. septentrionalis, that a papery 

 material was manufactured from the leaves and used in the 



1 Die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Pflanzen und Ameisen in 

 tropischen Amerika, 8vo. Jena, 1888. Cp. E. Huth, Myrmecophile 

 und Myrmecophobe Pflanzen. Berlin, 1887. 



