3. How do the ants contrive to preserve the seeds in their granaries free from germination and decay?
4. How are the seed-stores of tropical ants disposed below ground, and of what do they consist?
5. Do harvesting ants exist in the southern states of North America, in Australia, New Zealand, or at the Cape?
[SUPPLEMENT]
TO
TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS.
There would doubtless be a just feeling of pride and satisfaction in the heart of a naturalist who could say that he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with all the species of a particular group of animals, had learned their most secret habits, and mastered their several relations to the objects, animate and inanimate, which surrounded them. But perhaps a still keener pleasure is enjoyed by one who carries about with him some problem of the kind but partially solved, and who, holding in his hand the clue which shall guide him onwards, sees in each new place that he visits fresh opportunities of discovery. The latter is certainly the condition of those who take an interest in searching out the habits and characters of trap-door spiders; for this subject, far from being exhausted, expands under the light of recently acquired facts, and invites research in many parts of Europe, north as well as south.
We have only to compare the number of types of trap-door nest which were known before the publication of Ants and Spiders, with those at present recorded, to see how fruitful this field of inquiry has already proved.
Before this little work was published, only one type of trap-door nest was known in Europe: two new types were described in its pages, and I have now the pleasure of being able to bring three more hitherto unknown European types before the notice of my readers, thus raising the number to six in all. I do not include in these six types the very curious, and still imperfectly-known nest of Atypus;[122] a spider which is a true representative of the trap-door group as far as its structural characters are concerned, but which, although it excavates a silk-lined burrow in the earth, does not appear to construct any kind of door at the mouth of its tube.
[122] See Ants and Spiders, page 78. Atypus belongs to the sub-family Atypinæ, a division which does not include any of the Nemesias or Ctenizas, and of which indeed Atypus is the only European representative.