(16) _Atta (Aph. or Myrmica) barbara_ var.--A large ant (3 to 6 lines). The larger workers black, with red or mahogany-coloured heads, the smaller most frequently black, and like those of _Atta barbara_, of which this is probably only a variety. It differs however in its smell, which, when the body is crushed, resembles that of _Pheidole megacephala_, and is something like aniseed. Habits of _structor_ and _barbara_. Nest in earth. On one occasion I opened a large nest at Cannes, where the colony was composed in about equal parts of ants which in colour and appearance might be said to represent the three forms, _structor_, _barbara_, and the red-headed variety of the latter. There were also a few ants with pale yellowish brown heads. (Mentone and Cannes.) B. The following Indian species are described by the late Dr. Jerdon as harvesters, in the Madras Journal Lit. and Sc. 1851:-- (p. 45). _Atta rufa._--"Its favourite food is dead insects and other matter, but it also carries off seeds like the _Œcodoma_, chaff," &c. &c. (p. 46). _Œcodoma providens._--"Their common food I suspect to be animal matter, dead insects, &c. &c., which at all events they take readily, but they also carry off large quantities of seeds of various kinds, especially light grass seeds, and more especially garden seeds, as every gardener knows to his cost. They will take off cabbage, celery, radish, carrot, and tomato seeds, and in some gardens, unless the pots in which they are sown be suspended or otherwise protected, the whole of the seeds sown will be removed in one night. I have also had many packets of seeds (especially lettuce) in my room completely emptied before I was aware that the ants had discovered them. I do not know, however, if they eat them or feed their larvæ on them, though for what other purpose they carry them off I cannot divine. I have often observed them bring the seeds outside their holes, as recorded by Colonel Sykes, and this I think generally at the close of the rainy season; but in some cases I had reason to believe that it was merely the husks, of which I have seen quite heaps, and that the ants did not take them back to their nests. If any of the forementioned seeds be sown out at once in a bed, most likely in the morning the surface of the whole spot will be found covered over with little ridges, the works of these creatures, and the few seeds that perhaps remain, dug all round, and being carried off sometimes above ground, at other times under ground. Their galleries and subterranean passages are often very extensive, and it is no easy matter to dig down to their nest to see what becomes of the seeds." _Œcodoma diffusa_ has the same habits as _Œ. providens_. Lieut.-Col. Sykes, _Descriptions of New Indian Ants_ in _Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond._, i. 103 (1836).