Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/35

 meadows or terraced land, before I was met by a long train of ants, forming two continuous lines, hurrying in opposite directions, the one with their mouths full, the others with their mouths empty.

It was easy enough to find the nest to which these ants belonged, for it was only necessary to follow the line of ants burdened with seeds, grain, or entire capsules, which had their heads turned homewards, and there, sure enough, at about ten yards distance, and partly shaded by some small Cistus bushes, lay the nest, to and from the entrances of which the incessant stream of incomers and outgoers kept flowing.

The proceedings of the ants were the same as those previously observed in the late spring (April and May), the workers usually seeking their harvest at some distance from the nest, and going in search of it as far as the cultivated ground, where the crops of weeds were more abundant and more varied.

In a few cases, however, where the terraces were too far distant, they contented themselves with plundering the grasses, pea-flowers, honeywort, and the other denizens of the garrigue. In one case I was able to follow the thread-like column of workers from the nest to the weedy terrace where the plants grew from which they were gathering the seeds, and found that the nearly continuous double line measured twenty-four yards. Even this gives but an inadequate idea of the number of ants actively employed in the service of this colony, for hundreds of them were dispersed among the weeds on the terrace, and many were also employed in sorting the materials and in attending to the internal economy of the nest. Still