_Atta providens_, Sykes. "In illustration of the habits of this species of ant, I shall give the following extract from my diary:--'Poona, June 19, 1829. In my morning walk I observed more than a score of little heaps of grass-seeds (_Panicum_) in several places on uncultivated land near the parade-ground; each heap contained about a handful. On examination, I found they were raised by the above species of ant, hundreds of which were employed in bringing up the seeds to the surface from a store below; the grain had probably got wet at the setting in of the monsoon, and the ants had taken advantage of the first sunny day to bring it up to dry. The store must have been laid up from the time of the ripening of the grass-seeds in January and February. As I was aware this fact militated against the observations of entomologists in Europe, I was careful not to deceive myself by confounding the seeds of a _Panicum_ with the pupæ of the insect. Each ant was charged with a single seed, but as it was too weighty for many of them, and as the strongest had some difficulty in scaling the perpendicular sides of the cylindrical hole leading to the nest below, many were the falls of the weaker ants with their burdens from near the summit to the bottom. I observed they never relaxed their hold, and with a perseverance affording a useful lesson to humanity, steadily recommenced the ascent after each successive tumble, nor halted in their labour until they had crowned the summit, and lodged their burden on the common heap.'" (p. 104). "On the 13th of October of the same year, after the closing thunderstorms of the monsoon, I found this species in various places similarly employed as they had been in June preceding; one heap contained a double handful of grass-seeds. It is probable that the _Atta providens_ is a field species of ant, as I have not observed it in the houses." C. After the appearance of a brief notice of a communication which I sent in the winter of 1871-72 to the London Entomological Society, announcing the fact that certain ants harvest seeds in a systematic way at Mentone, two papers were published, in which confirmatory evidence of the existence of the habit in other parts of the world was set forth--one by Mr. Buchanan White, and the other by the late Mr. Horne. Mr. Horne's account of his observations was published in _Hardwicke's Science Gossip_, No. 89, p. 109 (for May 1, 1872), and runs as follows:[42]-- "My notes carry me to the far East, where I have often watched this most interesting class of insects, and briefly recorded my observations--unfortunately cut short by illness, and the necessity of return to Europe, which must be my apology for their want of completeness. [Footnote 42: I omit the preliminary portion, in which my observations are erroneously stated to have been made at Nismes and Capri.]