[Footnote 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. [Footnote 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. [Footnote 20: Notice sur les Mœurs et les Habitudes de quelques Espèces de Formiciens des Climats Chauds. Rev. Zool., Mai, 1848, p. 1849.] It seems strange that while travellers have reported the seed-storing habits of ants in far distant countries, our naturalists at home should have not only remained unaware of its existence in Europe, but even strenuously denied it. It is certain, however, that naturalists and others in southern Europe are more or less aware of the fact, but I have been unable to learn that any accurate account of the habits of harvesting ants has hitherto been published, or that any one has taken pains to discover what becomes of the seed so laboriously obtained.