The fact of the sound condition of the seeds in these granaries seemed to me so very strange and difficult to explain that I determined to pay special attention to the subject, and with this view collected and carefully examined large quantities of the grain and seeds taken at different times from the stores of twenty-one distinct nests, the first of which was opened on October 29th, and the last on May 5th. In these twenty-one nests out of the thousands of seeds taken I only found twenty-seven in seven nests which showed trace of germination, and of these eleven had been mutilated in such a way as to arrest their growth. The sprouting seeds were found in the months from November to February, while in the nests opened in October, March, April, and May, no sprouted seeds were discovered, though these latter months are certainly highly favourable to germination. It is therefore extremely rare to find other than sound and intact seeds in the granaries, and we must conclude that the ants exercise some mysterious power over them which checks the tendency to germinate. Apparently it is not that moisture or warmth or the influence of atmospheric air is denied to the seeds, for we find them in damp soil, in genial weather, and often at but a trifling distance below the surface of the ground; and I have proved that the vitality of the seeds is not affected by raising crops of young plants, such as fumitory, pellitory, _Polygonum aviculare_, and grasses, from seeds taken out of granaries.[26] [Footnote 26: This experiment was tried by me on two occasions, in the former case the seeds were taken from a granary about four inches below the surface of the ground, on November 10th, and sowed two days afterwards, and several of these were up on Dec. 1st. The second trial was made on seeds found at only one and a half inch below the surface, on Dec. 29th, 1871; these were sowed in England on June 18th, 1872, and the young plants made their appearance in large numbers ten days afterwards.]