The Zoologist— July, 1868. 1279 



limited ; but the cutting ants have what I take to be slaves in great 

 numbers; and the same type that constitutes their slave population 

 is found sometimes free, but very poor and in straggling communities. 

 The fact that these little sand-carrying ants are a servile race, I think 

 cannot well be denied. If they are produced from the eggs of the cutting 

 ant by a peculiar process of feeding, as is the case in producing the 

 various types found in a community or hive of honey bees, then the 

 conclusion will follow, that there are no proper communities of the 

 smaller type, and the little nests that 1 have occasionally seen of them 

 were nothing more than companies of badly managing absconding 

 slaves. 



February 26, 1861. There was a heavy rain last night. To day it 

 is very clear and pleasant: thermometer 70°. Everything that has 

 life in it or can grow is in motion. I was out on the prairie botanizing, 

 and while resting in the shade of a large live-oak, which was nearly in 

 full bloom, I discovered great numbers of all sizes of the cutting ants 

 ascending and descending the tree. On the ground beneath the tree 

 were thousands of the ants, carrying pieces of the leaves of various 

 plants. The greater portion were carrying the leaves of the live-oak : 

 some of the leaves were faded and nearly dry, and all were the growth 

 of the previous year. Seeing no ant-hill near I undertook to find out 

 how far they carried their leaves through the thick grass. In a short 

 time I discovered that they carried them above ground but a short 

 distance to a little pile of leaves and trash, under which they went 

 dragging their cut leaves with them. Turning up the little pile of 

 leafy trash, which seemed to have been driven there by the winds, in a 

 depression of the ground that was probably an old horse track, there 

 was a hole a full inch in diameter. Not a particle of dirt had been 

 thrown out around it, and yet the hole was large and slanted away to 

 the north-west. There were thousands of the ants at work in the 

 shade of the live-oak, gathering up the leaves that were being con- 

 stantly cut down from above, and on closer scrutiny I found several 

 other holes into which they were going with leaves : these holes also 

 slanted off under the surface, but had no earth thrown out around 

 them, and were all alike concealed with leaves and little sticks: all 

 the holes were crowded with the ants going in with leaves, or coming 

 out empty. With such a number of ants and so many holes, one 

 would expect to find heaps of earth piled out around them ; but such 

 was not the case. The holes were the outer termini of the subter- 

 ranean passages they had run out from their city, about fifty yards 



