Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/66

 roll itself into a ball, and at times the larvæ of an elater beetle. I have observed on more than one occasion that when in digging into an ant's nest I have thrown out an elater larva, the ants would cluster round it and direct it towards some small opening in the soil, which it would quickly enlarge and disappear down. At other times, however, the ants would take no notice of the elater, and it is my belief that the attentions paid to it on former occasions were purely selfish, and that they intended to avail themselves of the tunnel thus made down into the soil, with a view of reopening communications with the galleries and granaries concealed below, the approaches to which had been covered up. I have frequently watched the ants make use of these passages mined by the elater on these occasions.

At one time I suspected that the elater larvæ might consume the seeds stored by the ants, and I therefore confined some of them in a tumblerful of earth and seeds; but at the end of three weeks, though the larvæ were strong and healthy-looking, I could not detect that any of the seeds had been touched, and even those which had sprouted remained uninjured. I have searched in vain for the beetles and staphylinidæ which are known to inhabit certain ant's nests. In one nest I found (on Dec. 28) a quantity of small spherical, egg-like galls, slightly larger than but resembling the fruit of Fumaria capreolata, spotted with pink-brown on a yellowish or greyish ground. There was a dark spot at the point at which the mature insect would emerge, and one did escape from the egg-like cocoon while I was watching, and proved to be a Cynips of very small size, but furnished with a terrible dart for puncturing its prey.