Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/78

 Under ordinary circumstances the hard shell of the hemp-seed, and the coats of most other small fruits, grain, and seeds, would prevent the ants from getting at the contents while dry, but in the earliest stage of sprouting the shell parts of itself, allowing the radicle to protrude, and then they find their opportunity. (See Figs. A, A 2, Plate VI., p. 35.)

It has always been supposed that ants, from the delicate nature of their mouth organs, were only able to lap up liquids or to swallow very soft animal tissues, and one of the great difficulties in the way of admitting that they might collect seeds for food, lay in the apparent impossibility of their eating such hard substances. But it has generally been overlooked that not only are all seeds soft when moistened with water and ready to grow, but also that there are certain kinds of seeds the contents of which are naturally soft.

The most important organs in an ant's mouth are shown in Fig. D 2, and D 3, in Plate I., p. 21. D 3 represents one of the horny, toothed mandibles, which serve admirably for scraping off particles of flour from the seeds. Within these are the parts shown at D 2, where the outermost pieces are the maxillæ and their four-jointed palpi or feelers, and the innermost piece the labium and its three-jointed palpi, between which the end of the delicate membranous tongue appears.

I repeatedly placed leaves from the orange trees covered with cocci and aphides from rose-bushes and pine trees, all of which are eagerly sought by several other kinds of ants, in the captive nest, but the ants never looked twice at them, and this corresponds with the fact that I have never seen either structor or