ANTS AND THEIR HELPLESS CHILDREN. 295 
clear the ground round their nests, even among the 
toughest grass, and to allow nothing to spring up on 
these cleared disks except the needle grass or ant- 
rice/* which they store up in their granaries. 
We have already seen that the English hill-ant 
will clear a path ; but what labour it must be to clear, 
and keep clear, round spaces measuring from seven 
Fig. 94. 
Cleared disk of the agricultural ant, with a central mound and 
seven roads. — M c Cook, 
to twelve feet across, on wild meadow ground covered 
with rank weeds two or three feet high, some of them 
having stems as thick as one's finger ! Yet this is 
done by the "agricultural or bearded ants "t of Texas, 
which swarm in such numbers and clear so many 
spaces that they actually injure the farms on which 
* Aristida strict a. 
t Myrmica barbata {Pogonomyrmex barbatus). H. C. M c Cook, 
Agricultural Ant of Texas. Philadelphia, 1879. 
