158 Hillside. 



same time it is well known that there are several grain-storing 

 ants, some with most interesting peculiarities. For example, 

 some grow their own grain, whilst others again remove the 

 growing point of the seed when storing it, and thus prevent 

 germination, and so on. 



When the male and female ants first leave the nest and fly 

 in the air, they are sometimes in such immense numbers 

 that the air is quite blackened with them. On a hot day in 

 August, 1893, when on Ben Bheula (a mountain to the west 

 of Loch G-oil), at a height of some two thousand feet above the 

 sea, I was sitting on a little heathery knoll when I suddenly 

 found myself surrounded by a cloud of small black ants, 

 which crawled into my nostrils, ears, mouth in fact, all over 

 every exposed part of my body. Fortunately I had a gauze 

 net, such as is used for catching butterflies, with me ; this I 

 quickly dropped over my head, beat a hasty retreat, and 

 soon got clear of the vast horde, which must have numbered 

 millions. In some cases their numbers have been so great 

 that they have been taken for smoke. Thus, in 1866, a 

 paragraph in a daily paper recorded the occurrence of an 

 immense swarm of ants around the spire of a church in 

 Coburg. Firemen prepared to make the ascent, and the whole 

 neighbourhood turned out to see the fire. When the firemen 

 reached the top of the tower they were seen by the spectators 

 below to be apparently warding off the attacks of something, 

 and, rapidly descending, they reported that the smoke 

 was nothing more than millions of winged ants gyrating 

 about the steeple. As far back as 1814 another remarkable 

 swarm was recorded by the captain of a hulk lying in the 

 Medway, who noticed something black floating down the 

 river with the tide. A boat was sent off, and a bucket full 



