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NEW YORK 8TATE MUSEUM 



Ants Regarded as Valuable in Orchards. 



A correspondent of the Country Gentleman (vol. lvii, 1892, p. 689), 

 writing from London, presents the following plea for the introduction 

 and protection of ants in orchards: 



The Horticultural Times (London) has recently published a state- 

 ment that many of the leading orchardists of southern Germany and 

 northern Italy hold the black ant [Formica nigra L.] in high esteem, 

 and take measures to promote their increase. They establish ant-hills 

 in their orchards, and leave the police service of their fruit-trees en- 

 tirely to their tiny colonists, which pass all their time in climbing up 

 the trunks of the trees, cleaning the boughs and leaves of malefactors, 

 matured as well as embryonic, and descend laden with spoils to the 

 ground, where they comfortably consume or prudently store away 

 their booty. They never meddle with sound fruit, but only invade 

 such apples, pears, and plums as have already been penetrated by the 

 insects, in pursuit of which they get to the very heart of the fruit. 

 Nowhere else in the orchards are the apple and pear trees so free from 

 insect ravages and blight as in the immediate neighborhood of a large 

 ant-hill five or six years old. In China, ever since the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, and probably earlier, ants have been used to protect the fruit- 

 trees from the ravages of insect pests. In the province of Canton the 

 orange-trees are injured by certain worms, and the orchardists rid 

 themselves of the pests by importing ants from the hill country. 



Ants on Peonies. 



A correspondent has written: "The peony bushes in my garden 

 are thickly populated with black ants, which I find on no other 

 plant. Few of the blossoms reach handsome perfection, but show 

 the effects of insect attack. Are the ants to blame for the 

 mischief, or are they really friends, visiting the peonies only to destroy 

 small aphides or other minute creatures which do the harm ? In either 

 case, is there a better remedy than hellebore ? How would pyrethram 

 answer ? " 



Ants are not known to be injurious to peonies. They are often 

 drawn to them in numbers, either to feed on the minute insects that 

 are attracted to the plant, or on the sweet and sticky secretion which 

 it gives out so abundantly. I am not sure that any of the aphides 

 occur on the peony, and I have not the means of ascertaining at the 

 present writing whether they do or not. I find, however, no species 

 recorded in our lists as infesting that plant; still, it may sustain one 

 peculiar to it, as many of our species are still undescribed. I am under 

 the impression that several years ago, when my attention was called to 

 the presence- of ants on peonies, and to injuries which it was supposed 

 they were inflicting on the flower as it was about opening, I found 

 that the injury was caused by some small plant-bugs (Hemiptera) that 



