86 



horizontal. They were of various sizes and shapes, the average granary being about as 

 large as a gentleman's gold watch*" 



11 1 was greatly surprised to find that the seeds, though quite moist, showed no trace 

 of germination, and this was the more astonishing, as the self-sown seeds of the same 

 kinds were then coming up abundantly in gardens and on terraces." In order to investi- 

 gate this matter thoroughly he collected and carefully examined large quantities of the 

 grain and seeds taken at different times from the stores of twenty-one distinct nests, the 

 first of which was opened on October 29th, and the last on May 5th. In these twenty- 

 one nests, out of the thousands of seeds taken, he only found twenty-seven in seven nests 

 which showed trace of germination, and of these eleven had been mutilated in such a way 

 as to arrest their growth. Yet the vitality of the seeds was not destroyed, as he proved 

 by raising crops of various weeds from seeds taken out of these granaries. 



" When the seeds do germinate in the nests," he relates, "and it is my belief that 

 they are usually softened and made to sprout before they are consumed by the ants, it is 

 very curious to see how the growth is checked in its earliest stage, and how, after the 

 radicle or fibril — the first growing root of dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous seeds — 

 has been gnawed off, they are brought out from the nest and placed in the sun to dry, 

 and then after a sufficient exposure, carried below into the nest. The seeds are thus in 

 effect malted, the starch being changed into sugar, and I have myself witnessed the avid- 

 ity with which the contents of seeds thus treated are devoured by the ants." 



In an appendix, Mr. Moggridge gives corroborative testimony from other observers, 

 from which the following extracts are taken. Lieut. Colonel Sykes, in his descriptions, 

 of new Indian ants, relates: "In my morning walk at Poonah, June 19th, I observed 

 more than a score of little heaps of grass-seeds in several places, on uncultivated land 

 near the parade ground; each heap contained about a handful. On examination, I found 

 they were raised by a species of ant ( Atta providens ), hundreds of which were employed 

 in bringing up the seeds to the surface from a store below ; the grain had probably got 

 wet at the setting in of the monsoon, and the ants had taken advantage of the first 

 sunny day to bring it up to dry. The store must have been laid up from the time of the 

 ripening of the grass-seeds in January and February. As I was aware this fact mili- 

 tated against the observations of entomologists in Europe, I was careful not to deceive 

 myself by confounding the seeds of a Panicum with the pupae of the insect. Each ant 

 was charged with a single seed, but as it was too weighty for many of them, and as the 

 strongest had some difficulty in scaling the perpendicular sides of the cylindrical hole 

 leading to the nest below, many were the falls of the weaker ants with their burdens 

 from near the summit to the bottom. I observed they never relaxed their hold, and 

 with a perseverance affording a useful lesson to humanity, steadily recommenced the 

 ascent after each successive tumble, nor halted in their labour until they had crowned the 

 summit, and lodged their burden on the common heap." 



" On the 13th of October of the same year, after the closing thunderstorms of the 

 monsoon, I found this species in various places similarly employed as they had been in 

 June preceding ; one heap contained a double handful of grass-seeds. It is probable 

 that the Atta providens is a field species of ant, as I have not observed it in the houses." 



Dr. Jerdon, in a Madras journal, gives a somewhat similar account of the same 

 ant, stating that it digs up small garden seeds immediately after they are sown, and 

 carries them off to its nest, to the great annoyance of the gardener. Mr. Home gives 

 an account of similar observations in another part of the East, and Mr. Buchanan 

 White records the harvesting performances of a colony of ants at Capri. With all this 

 testimonv we cannot but believe that the ancients were right and modern European 

 entomologists wrong as regards this interesting characteristic of these species of ants. 



Miss Mary Treat, whom we have already quoted, gives, in a paper communicated to 

 Lippincott's Magazine, a very graphic and interesting account of her observations on 

 harvesting ants in Florida. Their nests are abundant in the low pine barrens of that 

 State, and consist externally of a little mound, surrounded by a circle of small chips and 

 bits of charcoal, often brought from some distance ; the mounds are regular in outline, 

 with a crater-like depression on the summit, in the centre of which is the entrance. Their 

 colour is reddish brown, and they are furnished with stings, which inflict about the same 



