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 PART I.

HARVESTING ANTS.

It was in May, 1869, that Mr. Bentham in his presidential address to the Linnean Society called attention to the want of reliable information as to the existence of such subterranean accumulations of seeds as are popularly supposed to account for the sudden appearance on railway cuttings, gravel from deep pits, and the like, of crops of weeds hitherto unknown in a district.

He suggested that it might repay the trouble if some accurate observers were to take this in hand, and investigate the matter both by examining samples of undisturbed soil taken from various depths,—when, if any seeds of moderate size were present and undecomposed, it would be tolerably easy to distinguish them,—and also by ascertaining what means of transport exist by which seeds may be scattered over exposed surfaces, and thus explain the difficulty without having recourse to hypothetical supplies of sound though long-buried seeds. *