The Zoologist — September, 1873. 3679 



betvyeen the ancients and their critics, between skilled observers 

 and pragmatic teachers, is very simple ; it is this : the observer, 

 convinced of the accuracy of his observations and conscious of the 

 truth of his assertions, cared nothing about supporting by details 

 facts that were patent to all, and which he could not dream would 

 be called in question; and the moderns, led by the ignis fatuus 

 scepticism, believed only what they saw or received from some 

 authority equally pragmatic with themselves. 



Mr. Moggridge gives all the passages I have cited pro and con, 

 and gives them with a candour and clearness which naturalists must 

 admire, even though they reject his conclusions, and it is very 

 possible some such may be found, for scepticism is more confident 

 than faith ; disputation more congenial than concurrence. He 

 determined to ascertain the truth, and to decide for himself whether 

 the historians or the sceptics were in the right. On previous 

 occasions he had obtained what he considered conclusive evidence 

 of the harvesting instinct of ants, but at that time was not aware 

 that the fact had been called in question ; and that our more able 

 observers, such as those I have cited, and " at the present day 

 Mr. Frederick Smith, had by close scrutiny of the habits of these 

 creatures proved that, wherever personal investigation had enabled 

 them to put the matter to proof, no trace of harvesting was found." 

 It is the more remarkable that this absence of evidence in any 

 particular district or county should have led to the rejection of 

 conclusions to be drawn from a mass of facts observed, even in 

 our own time, by Colonel Sykes, Dr. Jerdon, Mr. Charles Home, 

 Dr. Buchanan White, and others. 



Mr. Moggridge was further incited to the investigation by certain 

 remarks made by Mr. Benthara, in his presidential address to the 

 Linnean Society in 1869, wherein that gentleman called attention 

 to the want of reliable information as to the existence of such 

 accumulations of seeds as are popularly supposed to account for 

 the sudden appearance on railway cuttings, gravel from deep pits, 

 and the like, of crops of weeds hitherto unknown in a district : he 

 suggested that it might repay the trouble if some accurate observers 

 were to take this matter in hand and examine samples of un- 

 disturbed soil taken from various depths. It seems to have 

 instantly occurred to Mr. Moggridge that a harvesting habit he 

 had witnessed in the ants at Mentone, might afford an explanation ; 

 he determined to pursue the enquiry, and this book is the result. 



