The Zoologist — September, 1873. 3677 



" The Ants and the Grasshojjper. — Once in winter time the ants were 

 sunning their seed-store, which had been soaked by the rains. A grass- 

 hopper saw them at this, and being famished and ready to perish, he ran 

 up and begged for a bit. To the ants' question, ' What were you doing in 

 summer, idling, that you have to beg now?' be answered, 'I lived for 

 pleasure then, piping and pleasing travellers.' '0, ho ! ' they said, with a 

 grin, ' dance in winter if you pipe in sunjmer. Store seed for the future 

 ■when you can, and never mind playing and pleasing travellers.' " — jEsopica 

 FabulcB, Tauchnitz Edition, p. 92. 



" In summer time, after harvest, while the ears are being threshed, the 

 ants pry about in troops around the threshing floors, leaving their homes, 

 and going singly, in pairs, or sometimes three together. They then select 

 grains of wheat or barley, and go straight home by the way they came. 

 Some go to collect, others to carry away the burthen, and they avoid the 

 way for one another with great politeness and consideration, especially the 

 unburthened for the weight carriers. Now these excellent creatures, when 

 they have returned home and stored their galleries with wheat and barley, 

 bore through each grain of seed in the middle ; that which falls off in the 

 process becomes a meal for the ants, and the remainder is unfertile. This 

 these worthy housekeepers do lest when the rains come the seeds should 

 sprout, as they would do if left entire, and thus the ants should come to 

 want. So we see the ants have good share in the gifts of Nature, in this 

 respect as well as others." — jElian de Naturd Animaliuni, ii. 25. 



" The ants not only store the seed, but bite out that beginning or point 

 from which the plumule springs in a grain of wheat." — Aldrovandus, De 

 Insectis, lib. v., de Formicis. 



This last-named author also mentions a certain Simon Mariolus, 

 who, "in his most pleasant and learned work, introduces a 

 philosopher as taking his walks abroad and examining an ants' 

 nest with its seed-store." In a word, the foregoing passages so 

 exactly describe what Mr. Moggridge has recently observed that 

 they have the appearance of having been written to confirm his 

 statements, rather than of having existed centuries before our author 

 entered on his praiseworthy task. I now proceed to quote 



Passages from the Moderns denying the Harvesting Habits 

 of Ants : — 



" When observers of Nature began to examine the manners and economy 

 of these creatures more narrowly, it was found, at least with respect to the 

 European species of ants, that no such hoards of grain were made by them ; 

 and, in fact, that they had no magazines in their nests in which provisions 



SECOND SERIES— VOL. VIII. 2 X 



