Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/95

 surface of the whole spot will be found covered over with little ridges, the works of these creatures, and the few seeds that perhaps remain, dug all round, and being carried off sometimes above ground, at other times under ground. Their galleries and subterranean passages are often very extensive, and it is no easy matter to dig down to their nest to see what becomes of the seeds." Œcodoma diffusa has the same habits as Œ. providens.

Lieut.-Col. Sykes, Descriptions of New Indian Ants in ''Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond.'', i. 103 (1836).

Atta providens, Sykes. "In illustration of the habits of this species of ant, I shall give the following extract from my diary:—'Poona, June 19, 1829. In my morning walk I observed more than a score of little heaps of grass-seeds (Panicum) in several places on uncultivated land near the parade-ground; each heap contained about a handful. On examination, I found they were raised by the above species of ant, hundreds of which were employed in bringing up the seeds to the surface from a store below; the grain had probably got wet at the setting in of the monsoon, and the ants had taken advantage of the first sunny day to bring it up to dry. The store must have been laid up from the time of the ripening of the grass-seeds in January and February. As I was aware this fact militated against the observations of entomologists in Europe, I was careful not to deceive myself by confounding the seeds of a Panicum with the pupæ of the insect. Each ant was charged with a single seed, but as it was too weighty for many of them, and as the strongest had some difficulty in scaling the perpendicular sides of the cylindrical hole leading to the nest below, many were the falls of the weaker ants with their burdens from near the summit to the bottom. I observed they never relaxed their hold, and with a perseverance affording a useful lesson to humanity, steadily recommenced the ascent after each successive tumble, nor halted in their labour until they had crowned the summit, and lodged their burden on the common heap.'"

(p. 104). "On the 13th of October of the same year, after the closing thunderstorms of the monsoon, I found this species in various places similarly employed as they