HARVESTING* ANTS. 
105 
porter dodges under a too narrow opening. She backs out and 
tries another passage. Now the sharp points of the husk are 
entangled in the grass. She jerks or pulls the burden loose, and 
hurries on. The road is reached, and progress is comparatively 
easy. Holding the grain in her mandibles well above the 
surface, she breaks into what I may describe with suffi- 
cient accuracy as 4 a trot/ and with little further interruption 
reaches the disk and disappears within the gate. There are 
variations from this behaviour, more or less marked, according 
to the nature of the grounds, the seeds, and (I suppose) the indi 
viduality of the harvesters ; but the mode of ingathering the 
crop is substantially as above. Each ant operated independently. 
Once only did I see anything like an effort to extend sympathy 
and aid. A worker minor seeming to have difficulty in testing 
or adjusting a large seed of buffalo-grass, was assisted (ap- 
parently) by one worker major, and then by another, after 
which she went on her way. 
But these ants do not confine their harvesting opera- 
tions to gathering fallen seeds ; they will, like the ants of 
Europe, also cut seeds from the stalk. 
In order to test the disposition of crudelis to garner the 
seeds from the stem, bunches of millet were obtained from the 
North, and stalks eighteen inches high, crowned by the boll of 
•^ose-set seeds, were stuck in the mound of an active formicary. 
The ants mounted the stems and set to work vigorously to 
tecure the seeds, clusters of twenty or more being engaged at 
once upon one head. The seeds were carried off and stored 
within the nest. This experiment proved pretty conclusively 
that in the seeding season cruclelis does not wait for the seeds 
to drop, but harvests them from the plant. 
The 6 granaries ’ into which the seeds are brought are 
kept distinct from the 6 nurseries ’ for the pupae. Their 
walls, floor, and roof are so hard and smooth, that MacCook 
thinks the insects must practise upon them 6 some rude 
mason’s craft.’ 
He traced these granaries to a depth of four feet 
below the surface of the ground, and believes, from the 
statements of a native peasant, that they, or at least the 
formicaries, extend to a depth of fifteen feet. 
As regards the care that the ants take of the gathered 
grain, Lincecum describes the same habit as Moggridge 
and Sykes describe — viz., the sunning of wet seeds tc 
