Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/38

 unconcernedly by and over the beads which lay where I had strewn them in apparently undiminished quantities; and I conclude from this that they had found out their mistake, and had wisely returned to their accustomed occupations.

I have often amused myself by strewing hemp and canary seed or oats, all of which form heavy burdens for the ants, near their nests; and it is a curious sight to watch the eagerness and determination with which they will drag them away. It is interesting also to note how on the following day the husks of these seeds will appear on the rubbish-heap, or sometimes, after a shower of rain, they will be brought out by the ants with the point of the little root (the radicle or fibril as the case may be) gnawed off (see Figs. A, B, C, Plate VI., p. 35).

It frequently happens that on the wild hillside the position of a nest of Atta barbara is indicated by the presence of a number of plants growing on or round the kitchen midden, which are properly weeds of cultivation, and strangers to the cistus- and lavender-covered banks of the garrigue. These have sprung from seeds accidentally dropped by the ants, and which they had obtained from the lemon terraces. Thus when you see little patches of ground from one to three feet long and broad, covered with such plants as fumitory (Fumaria), oats (Avena), nettles (Urtica membranacea), four species of Veronica, chickweed (Alsine media), goosefoot (Chenopodium), Rumex Bucephalephorus, wild marigold (Calendula arvensis), Antirrhinum Orontium, Linaria simplex, and Cardamine hirsuta, you may confidently expect to find a colony of these ants close at hand.