ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE. 23 
regale themselves. This protective care results in rapid increase of 
these insects, with resultant damage to the plants infested. In 
florists' establishments the ants sometimes sever the petals of cut 
flowers in their search for nectar. 
Visits to flowers of various kinds seem a natural habit, and when 
the ants do not find the nectar readily available they quickly cut 
their way to it in all cases where the plant tissue is tender enough 
to permit of it. In their attacks upon orange blossoms they are 
particularly severe, as they sometimes eat their way into the fruit 
buds even before the latter are fully open. The workers have also 
been noticed regularly visiting the extra-floral nectaries of cotton 
and other plants. 
To truck growers the ants are very troublesome, owing to the 
manner in which they remove certain garden seeds before they have 
sprouted. Lettuce seed is especially subject to this attack, and in 
infested districts the rows of lettuce seed are covered with corn meal, 
which is also attractive to the ants. By the time cho ants have 
removed the meal the lettuce seeds will have sprouted. The ants 
also assiduously attend plant lice on a number of vegetables, making 
the latter unpleasant to handle. Cabbage heads are often found 
through which plant lice and ants are completely distributed, the 
cabbage leaves merely serving as divisions between layers of the 
insects. 
In the sugar-cane fields the ant again comes to the front, owing 
to its fondness for the excretions of the sugar-cane mealy-bug, 
Pseudococcus calceolaria. (See figs. 3, 4.) In order to protect 
these insects from storms and enemies, the ants build protective 
coverings and shelters over them and attend them constantly. (See 
fig. 5.) As the result of these attentions the mealy-bugs thrive in 
numbers and destructiveness to an extent which is impossible where 
the ants are not present. Luckily the territory infested by the 
mealy-bug is as yet very restricted, but this insect threatens to 
become a serious problem in the future, owing to the manner in 
which it destroys the eyes of "seed cane" after it is planted, prevent- 
ing sprouting and thus injuring the stand. The vacant rows in a 
field of cane, due to this injury, are shown in figure 3. The control of 
this mealy-bug therefore resolves itself into the problem of controlling 
the ant. 
In cornfields it can be easily noticed that aphides are several times 
as numerous, and are also more generally distributed, in districts 
infested by the Argentine ant than in the noninfested districts. The 
ants are also found in great numbers attending plant lice upon cotton 
plants, and in a cotton field at Baton Rouge, where these ants were 
very numerous, it was noticed that the cotton aphides remained 
