68 THE ARGENTINE ANT. 
they emerged and were summarily disposed of in the same manner 
as were the Polistes. Invariably the flies were seized before enough 
time had elapsed for their wings to expand and dry, and only a very 
small percentage of them escaped the ants. 
Cockroaches are esteemed a great delicacy by these ants, and while 
the workers are not able to capture uninjured roaches, they attack 
in great numbers any roach so unlucky as to be injured. Dead cock- 
roaches are also eagerly visited by the ants and all soft parts removed. 
It seems almost retribution that one of the few natural enemies of the 
Argentine ant should itself be a larval cockroach (TJiyrsocera cincta 
Burm.), mention of which is made on a following page. 
THE ARGENTINE ANT AND THE BOIrL WEEVIL. 
Prior to the advent of the boll weevil in the territory infested by the 
Argentine ant there was considerable speculation as to whether so 
combative an ant might not prove to be an insect of some value in 
protecting the cotton crop against weevil ravages. Any hopes of this 
kind which were entertained have not thus far been realized. In one 
rather unimportant respect the ants seem to annoy the boll weevils. 
At Baton Rouge the Louisiana Experiment Station had afewsmall plats 
of cotton, aggregating less than an acre, within the city limits and in a 
section where the Argentine ants were exceedingly abundant. The 
plats were bordered on one side by the Louisiana State University 
campus, with its large oak trees sheltering hundreds of ant colonies, 
and on the other side by the batture of the Mississippi River, which 
was likewise a seething mass of ant colonies. The ground in the cotton 
plats was therefore heavily infested by the ants, and when this field 
also became infested by the boll weevil the outcome was watched with 
considerable interest. During September, 1909, it was found that 
the ants, in their steady patrol of the plants while attending cotton 
lice, worried the adult boll weevils considerably. Whenever an ant 
encountered a boll weevil it Would nip the legs of the latter, usually 
causing the weevil to fly to another plant or drop to the ground. In 
no case were the ants found killing fully matured weevils, though in a 
few instances they did attack and kill unhardened weevils which had 
just issued from infested squares. The great abundance of ants in 
these plats evidently resulted in many of the weevils being driven off, 
for something of a top crop was produced in the fall of 1909. It is 
worthy of note in this connection that the heavy ant infestation 
obtaining in these plats will not be duplicated in large cotton fields 
for many years to come, if, indeed, such will ever be the case. Condi- 
tions in large cotton areas are not such as to attract the Argentine ant 
in numbers. It was also of interest to note that the presence of the 
ants in these particular plats resulted in an abnormally heavy infesta- 
