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 7 
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. 
