Huber again throws the weight of his great authority into the scale against the ants, when he says,[16] "I am naturally led to speak in this place of the manner in which ants subsist in the winter, since we have relinquished the opinion that they amass wheat and other grain, and that they gnaw the corn to prevent it from germinating." He then goes on to show how the ants are frequently torpid during the winter, and that when it happens that a few warmer days wake them up to life, they can always find a few aphides also on the alert; for, strange to say, the same degree of warmth which rouses the ants calls forth the aphides also. It would appear that ants in the northern parts of Europe feed on the honey-dew of aphides, and on animal matter when they can get it; and up to the present time the belief prevails among our modern naturalists that they are limited to the same diet in all parts of Europe.
[16] Huber, on Ants, translated by J. R. Johnson, 1820.
It is now well known, however, that exceptions must probably be made in tropical countries, for the observations of Lieut.-Col. Sykes[17] and Dr. Jerdon[18] have shown that many ants in India collect grain in large quantities, robbing the crops and plants cultivated in gardens, and even stealing seeds put away in drawers, the inference being that they employ them for food. The same observers have recorded how the ants may be seen after wet weather bringing out the grain to dry in the sun.
[17] Lieut.-Col. Sykes, Description of New Indian Ants, in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., i. 103 (1836), where a single species of ant, which he names Atta providens, is described, and its habit of harvesting recorded.
[18] Dr. Jerdon, Madras Journal Lit. and Sc. (1851), where three species are stated to harvest seeds on a large scale—namely, Œcodoma (or Atta) providens, Œcodoma diffusa, and Atta rufa, all of which belong to the same section of ants as our Mentonese harvesters, Atta barbara, Atta structor, and Pheidole (or Atta) megacephala. These very interesting observations of Dr. Jerdon's, as well as those of Lieut.-Col. Sykes, will be found in [Appendix B].
Dr. Lincecum has also given a very interesting account[19] of the habits of the "agricultural ant" inhabiting Texas, Myrmica (Atta) barbata, which not only stores the grain of a particular rice-like grass, but is said to maintain a clean crop of this plant around its nest, suffering no weed to appear among it, and harvesting the crop in its proper season.
[19] Published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, vol. vi. p. 29. 1861.
The Sauba ant (Œcodoma cephalotes) has been seen by Mr. Bates plundering baskets containing mandioca meal (an impure form of tapioca) in Brazil, and this in so wholesale a manner as shortly to threaten the loss of the entire supply; and Dr. Delacoux records[20] the presence in New Granada of a monstrous ant, called by the natives Arieros, a word which, I am informed, is of Arabic extraction, and means the carrier, which emptied an entire sack of maize belonging to him in a single night.
[20] Notice sur les Mœurs et les Habitudes de quelques Espèces de Formiciens des Climats Chauds. Rev. Zool., Mai, 1848, p. 1849.