EDWARD BURGESS. 57 



I think the ingenuity of man would be taxed to the 

 utmost to accomplish the same result ; for you must re- 

 member that the seeds are just below the surface, and 

 hence exposed to the heat and moisture incident to warm 

 climates. 



Dr. Lincecum further asserts that around these disks 

 the ants plant a grass seed called "ant rice," which 

 germinates in November and is harvested in June. 

 While it is growing all other plants are carefully weeded 

 out from it, and after the crop is gathered the stubble is 

 cleared off and carried away. 



Some of these habits and practices may be called in- 

 stincts, because they are performed by successive genera- 

 tions, but how did the instincts themselves originate ? 

 There can belittle doubt but that these instincts are the 

 accumulated experiences of generations, that these little 

 creatures have discovered by repeated tests the useful- 

 ness of the habits they have adopted, and by continual 

 exercise they have become converted into instincts. But 

 that they couid, for example, have thought of utilizing 

 the labor of others for their own benefit by making 

 slaves of them, indicates a capacity to think and to con- 

 trive, which scarcely seems possible with such an ani- 

 mal. These diminutive creatures, however, are alive to 

 every new situation, and are ready with some contrivance 

 to meet it. Professor Leuckart reports that to protect a 

 tree that the ants used as a pasture for aphides, he 

 bound around the trunk a cloth soaked in tobacco juice. 

 Those descending from the tree, meeting with this 

 noxious obstruction, returned to the overhanging limbs 

 and dropped from them to the ground ; while those who 

 wanted to go up brought pellets of earth and plastered 

 them on to the cloth, until a passage of earth was made. 



Another tree, likewise infested with ants and aphides, 

 was encircled with a coating of tar. The descending 

 ants who first approached it stuck fast — the others, 



13 



