HARVESTING ANTS. 
97 
present known, practise the peculiar and distinctive 
habits to be described under this division belong for the 
most part to one genus, Atta , which, however, comprises a 
number of species distributed in localised areas over all the 
four quarters of the globe. Hitherto nineteen species 
have been detected as having the habits in question. 
These consist of gathering nutritious seeds of grasses 
during summer, and storing them in granaries for winter 
consumption. We owe our present knowledge concerning 
these insects to Mr. Moggridge , 1 who studied them in the 
south of Europe, Dr. Lincecum , 2 and Mr. MacCook , 3 who 
studied them in Texas, and Colonel Sykes 4 and Dr. Jerdon , 5 
who made some observations upon them in India. They 
also occur scattered over a great part of Europe and in 
Palestine, where they were clearly known to Solomon and 
pther classical writers of antiquity , 6 whose claim to accu- 
rate observation, although long disputed (owing to the 
authority of Huber), has now been amply vindicated. 
Mr. Moggridge, who was a careful and industrious 
observer, found the following points of interest in the 
habits of the European harvesters. From the nest in 
various directions there proceed outgoing trains, which 
may be from twenty to thirty or more yards in length, and 
each consists of a double row of ants, moving, like the 
leaf-cutting ants, in opposite directions. Those in the 
outgoing row are empty-handed, while those in the in- 
coming row are laden. But here the burdens are grass 
seeds. The roads terminate in the foraging ground, or 
ant-fields, and the insects composing the columns there 
become dispersed by hundreds among the seed-yielding 
grasses. The following is their method of collecting seeds ; 
I quote from Moggridge : — - 
1 Harvesting Ants and Trap -door Spiders , London, 1873 and Sup- 
plement, 1874. 
2 Journal Linn Soe ., vol. vi. p. 29, 1862, 
8 Agricultural Ant of Texas , Philadelphia, 1880. 
4 Trans. Ent. Soo. Land ., i. 103, 1836. 
5 Madras Journ . Lit. Sc. 1851. 
8 For this see Moggridge, loo . cit. pp. 6-10, where, besides Prov. iv. 
6-8, and xxx. 25, quotations are given from Horace, Virgil, Plautus, 
and others. 
