10 BULLETIN 647, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



pruning saw in the orange groves, lapping up the sap, just as it does 

 the nectar from flowers, and the sap-laden ants passing from the 

 wounds to the nest in the soil. This habit of visiting cuts and bruises 

 on orange trees may be of importance in the carriage of certain 

 disease germs to places where they may infect the trees readily 

 through wounds. 



The ant is very fond of the juice of many kinds of fresh fruits and 

 makes the most of the rotting oranges on the ground and the split 

 fruit on the tree. It may be laid down as a practically infallible 

 rule that the ants do not make the initial break into the rind or peel 

 of fruits. This fact was announced long ago as true of European 

 ants in general by Forel, 1 who, as a result of his observations of these 

 ants on pear, apple, peach, and orange trees, concluded that they 

 never make the first incision through the skin of these fruits. The 

 same is true of the Argentine ant as regards the orange, fig, plum, 

 peach, and loquat in Louisiana. In some orange groves in winter 

 the juice from bruised, decaying, and split oranges forms the ants' 

 principal source of food. The ants also feed to a large extent upon 

 figs when the fruits become soft upon the trees and many fall to the 

 ground. Entrance to even this soft, thin-skinned fruit is gained 

 almost invariably through wounds made by birds and the adult 

 wood-boring beetle Ptychodes trilineatus Fab., or through a minute 

 break in the calyx cup or the wrinklelike cracks which commonly 

 form in the skin of the Louisiana fig. As a rule the ants do not 

 carry away particles of the flesh of fruits. The flesh gradually dis- 

 appears from an attacked fruit because deprived of the juice which 

 constituted most of its mass. On entering a fruit the ants first lick 

 up all the juice ready at hand. A shred of the flesh then is taken in 

 the mandibles and the juice squeezed out and simultaneously lapped 

 up by the tongue. This is repeated until all the flesh of that 

 particular fruit has disappeared. 



Direct Injury to Blossoms and Other Plant Parts, 

 injury to blossoms. 



The ant sometimes chews into the stamens and petals of the orange 

 and other flowers, but by no means habitually, and it is rare indeed 

 that so many blossoms are injured as to cause any loss of importance. 

 After examining thousands of blossoms in the worst ant-infested 

 orchards during three seasons for such injury, it has been necessary 

 to conclude that this activity of the ant is of no economic consequence. 

 In certain situations where the ants are very numerous and desirable 

 food relatively scarce some damage may occur in this way. It occurs 



1 Forel, Dr. Auguste. Les Fourmis de la Suisse, p. 422. 1875. 



