Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/98

 could there be in eating it? The season of the year when I observed them (November) is the beginning of the cold weather, and no rain would probably fall (excepting a little at Christmas) till next May or June. Later on seed would be rare; and how the nest fares at a time when floods of water often pass over the plain I cannot conceive.

"It is clear that some escape, and we know with what prodigious rapidity these colonies increase. But these jottings have been recorded merely to show how this species of ant store grain against a time of scarcity, and fully bear out the statement in the text with which I commenced this paper."

The following are Dr. Buchanan White's notes, alluded to above, published in the Transactions of the Entomological Society (London, 1872) part i., Proceedings, p. v.:— "Capri, June 3, 1866. In the afternoon to the Punta Tragara, where a colony of ants afforded us much amusement. These little insects had a regular road, made by cutting away the grass and other plants in their way. This road was about one inch and a half wide, and several yards long, and led to a clump of plants in seed. Along this road a long train of ants were perpetually travelling to the nest (or formicarium), bearing with them pods of leguminous plants, seeds of grass and of Composites (Chrysanth. segetum), &c.  "The perseverance with which a single ant would tug and draw a pod four times his own length was very interesting; sometimes three or four ants would unite in carrying one burden. Near the formicarium was a great mass of débris, consisting of empty pods, twigs, emptied snail shells, &c., cast out by the ants. The seeds appeared to be stored inside the nest, as in one that I opened the other day I found a large collection. The species was a black ant; the formicarium was underground."  D.  On Collecting and Examining Ants.

There are very few branches of natural history which might be more easily followed by a traveller, or one who fears to