Ants. 23 



rice" and of a grass. These ants clear disks, 10 or 

 12 feet in diameter, round the entrance to their nest 

 a work of no small labour in the rich soil, and 

 under the hot sun, of Texas. I say " clear" disks, 

 but some, though not all, of these disks are occu- 

 pied, especially round the edge, by a growth of 

 ant-rice. It seems evident that the disks are kept 

 carefully clean, that the ant-rice alone is permitted 

 to grow on them, and that the produce of this crop 

 is carefully harvested ; but it is possible that the 

 ant-rice sows itself, and is not actually cultivated 

 by the ants. I have myself observed in Algeria, 

 that certain plants are allowed by the ants to grow- 

 on their nests while others are destroyed. 



3. The relations existing between ants and other 

 animals are even more interesting than their rela- 

 tions with plants. As a general rule not, however, 

 without many remarkable exceptions they may be 

 said to be those of deadly hostility. 



Though honey is the principal food of ants they 

 are very fond of meat, and in their wild state 

 ants destroy large numbers of other insects. Our 

 English ants generally go out hunting alone, but 

 many of the species living in hotter climates hunt 

 in packs, or even in troops. 



4. Savage has given a graphic account of the 

 " Driver" Ants of West Africa. They keep down, 

 he says, "the more rapid increase of noxious in- 

 sects and smaller reptiles ; consume much dead 

 animal matter, which would otherwise become 



