Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/275

Rh study the ways of her "who, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvests," was a figure drawn from careless observation; that ants, being carnivorous insects, would not eat dry, hard grains of wheat or barley, the idea that they would do so having arisen from mistaking the whitish cocoons which inclose the pupae for grains of wheat, to which they bear a resemblance. But Mr. Traherne Moggridge has recently, by careful observation in the south of Europe, confirmed in many of their minutest details the accounts given by ancient writers, and shown that, in treating these accounts with contempt, it is the modern authors who have been guilty of forming hasty conclusions from insufficient data.

The ants were described as ascending the stalks of cereals and gnawing off the grains, while others below detached the seed from the chaff and carried it home; as gnawing off the radicle to prevent germination, and spreading their stores in the sun to dry after wet weather. These statements Mr. Moggridge has verified, supplementing them by discovering the granaries in which they are stored, sometimes excavated in solid rock. He has seen them in the act of collecting seeds, and has traced seeds to the granaries; he has seen them bring out the grains to dry after a rain, and nibble off the radicle from those which were germinating; lastly, he has seen them feed, on the seeds so collected. A curious point is, that the collections of seeds, although stored in damp situations, very rarely germinate; yet nothing has been done to deprive them of vitality, for, on being sown, they grow vigorously. Their depredations are of such extent as must cause serious loss to cultivators.

Texas and Northern Mexico furnish a remarkable species in the honey-making ants (Myrmecocystus Mexicanus). The workers of their communities are divided into three classes: 1. Yellow workers, nurses and feeders; 2. Yellow workers, honey-makers; 3. Black workers, guards and purveyors.

The site chosen for their nest is usually some sandy soil in the neighborhood of shrubs and flowers, the space occupied being four or five feet square. The black workers surround the nests as guards, and are always in a state of great activity. They form two lines of defense, moving different ways, their march always being along three sides of a square; one column moving from the southeast to the southwest corners of the fortification, while the other proceeds in the opposite direction. Most of the nests lie open to the south; the east, west, and northern sides, being surrounded by the soldiers. In case of an enemy approaching, a number of guards sally forth to meet the intruder. Spiders, wasps, beetles, and other insects are, if they come too near the hive, savagely attacked, and the dead bodies speedily removed from the neighborhood, the soldiers at once resuming their places in the line.