Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/23

 *ledge goes, only two out of the 104 species of European ants are possessed of the habit of collecting and storing seed, and it may be reasonably asked how it can have come about, if this is the case, that the ancient authors were so well acquainted with the fact.

The explanation is that these writers lived on the shores of the Mediterranean, where these two species—''Atta barbara and structor''—are extremely common objects, both on account of their abundance and their habits. The long trains of harvesters remain exposed to view for hours together, and structor seeks the neighbourhood or even the interior of towns, so that these ants arrest the attention even of the unobservant, and often become familiar as the sparrows.

There can be little doubt that these two ants display the same habits throughout all the warmer districts which they inhabit, but whether they do so in Switzerland, Germany, Northern France, and the other colder portions of their range, remains one of the many interesting questions which still await investigation.

Mr. F. Smith has recorded the presence of ''Atta barbara'' in Palestine, and I have lately obtained some curious evidence which goes to show that harvesting ants not only carried on their operations in times past in that country, but that their seed-stores were on a much larger scale than any I have observed on the Riviera.

I am indebted to Dr. F. A. Pratt for the information that mention was made of ants and their stores in the Misna, that codification of the traditionary and unwritten laws of the Jews, which was commenced after the birth of Christ under the presi