Wasps, Bees, and Ants 
543 
(unfit for food) from the nest, and dropping them at the edge of the cleared 
circle, results in a kind of unintentional planting of grain and grass, and as 
Aristida seeds make up an exceptionally large part of the food-stores, a 
majority of the plants in the ring about the nest may often be Aristida. A 
common Californian agricultural ant, P. subdentatus, found abundantly by 
Professor Heath at Monterey, is a splendid fighter as well as provident grain- 
storer, its stings being declared 
by Heath to be more painful than 
those of the honey-bee. 
Eciton,the driver-ant, a genus 
long famous for the marauding 
and pillaging habits of certain 
Brazilian species — in these 
marches the great procession is 
said to be marshaled by big¬ 
headed officers and led by scouts’. 
—is represented in the south¬ 
western part of our country by a 
few species, E. caecum , E. schmitti, 
E. opacitherce, and others. 
These show in their life the char¬ 
acteristic habit of indulging in 
maurauding expeditions to the 
nests of other ants for the pur¬ 
pose of seizing and carrying off 
the larvae and pupae, which are 
used for food by the Ecitons. 
Not all the booty is devoured 
at once; some of it may be stored 
in the Eciton nest (which is 
usually but a temporary habita¬ 
tion) and gradually used through 
several days after the expedition. 
The Ecitons are restless ants, and have a great predilection for moving about 
on long marches or migrations. On these marches they carry with them stored 
booty, which may consist of the dead bodies of various small insects, as well 
as the living larvae and pupae of pillaged ant communities. The nests of 
Eciton are entirely subterranean, and are usually simply a cavity, partly 
natural, partly dug out by the ants under some sheltering stone or other 
object lying in the ground. The males and females differ remarkably from 
the workers and from each other in appearance, so much so indeed that the 
few sexual Eciton forms that have already been discovered have mostly been 
Fig. 748. —Shed-nest of Cremastogaster lineolata, 
18 inches long by 12 inches in circumference, 
taken several feet from the ground in a bur¬ 
row in Hyde County, North Carolina; this ant 
usually nests under sticks and logs. (After 
Atkinson.) 
