104 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



Gardening Ants.— The Leaf-cutting Ants {CEco- 

 domd) of tropical America are often alluded to by 

 travellers on account of their ravages on vegetation ; 

 and they are capable of destroying whole plantations 

 of orange, mango, and lemon trees. They climb the 

 tree, station themselves on the edge of a leaf and 

 make a circular incision with their scissor-like jaws ; 

 the piece of leaf, about the size of a sixpence, held 

 vertically between the jaws, is then borne off to the 

 formicarium. This consists of low wide mounds, in 

 the neighbourhood of which no vegetation is allowed, 

 probably in order that the ventilation of the under- 

 ground galleries may not be interfered with. 



For a long time there was considerable doubt as to 

 the use to which the leaf-cutting ants put the leaves ; 

 some naturalists supposed they are used directly as 

 food, others that the ants roof their underground 

 dwellings with them. The question was set at rest by 

 Fritz Miiller, who observed these ants in Brazil,^ and 

 independently by Belt, who studied them in Nicar- 

 agua, and has written an interesting account of their 

 proceedings.^ The real use of the leaves is as manure 

 on which to grow a minute species of fungus ; these 

 ants are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters. 

 Belt several times exposed the underground chambers 

 to observation and found that they were always about 

 three parts filled with "a speckled, brown, flocculent, 

 spongy-looking mass of a light and loosely-connected 

 substance." Scattered throughout these masses were 

 the pupjE and larvs, together with the smallest 

 division of workers who do not engage in leaf- 

 carrying, but whose duties appear to be to cut up the 



' Nahire, nth June 1S74. And see Appendix. 



' Naturalist in Nicaragua, 2nd edition, 1888, pp. 71-84. 



