Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/75

 represented the amount of space contained in their galleries and chambers constructed below. It was not, however, until nineteen days after their capture that the ants began to form systematic trains to carry down the seeds which I placed for them on the surface, and I suppose that they had required this time for the construction and consolidation of the granary chambers. From this time forward the ants came out repeatedly in greater or less force to gather in the various seeds with which I supplied them. Indeed, throughout the whole of their captivity they seemed to be perfectly contented with their lot and free from disease, remarkably few ants dying or appearing feeble, and as far as the limited space would permit they reproduced most of the habits which I had noted as belonging to them in a wild state, such as the formation of a rubbish heap; bringing out refuse materials, gnawed and empty seed-coats, the ends of radicles, and root fibres which had penetrated their nest, and laying sprouted seeds in the air to dry after having gnawed off the radicle in order to arrest their growth.

I was also in this way able to see for myself much that I otherwise could not have seen. Thus I was able to watch the operation of removing roots which had pierced through their galleries, belonging to seedling plants growing on the surface, and which was performed by two ants, one pulling at the free end of the root, and the other gnawing at its fibres where the strain was greatest, until at length it gave way. Again the habit of throwing sick and apparently dead ants into the water, the object of which was in part, I imagine, to be rid of them, and partly