Ants and Their Ways

sculptured species, Tetramorium cæspitum, at Branscombe, on the Devonshire coast. The diligent workers, I noticed, filing into their nest with grass-seeds in their mandibles; and in disturbing their habitation I found many seeds scattered among the débris of what I took to be their granary. I should add that the late Rev. J. Traherne Moggridge says in his attractive work on Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders, that this species has been observed at Mentone and Cannes occasionally collecting and carrying in seeds. The instance I have given is, I believe, the first of the harvesting instinct having been witnessed in our own country.

The present work owes its origin to a series of papers which I was requested to prepare for the Leisure Hour, and which appeared during the year 1880. Since that date additional material illustrating the marvellous history of the 'little people' has accumulated through the researches of Sir John Lubbock,' Dr. McCook of Philadelphia, myself, and others. Dr. McCook has published two volumes, one which appeared in 1880, constituting a monograph of the habits, architecture, and structure of Pogonomyrmex barbatus, the agricultural ant of Texas; and the other, in 1882, giving the remarkable history of the honey ants of the Garden of the Gods, and also of the occident ants of the American plains. I would also call the reader's attention to the Synopsis of British Heterogyna and Fossorial Hymenoptera, by Edward Saunders, Treasurer of the

1 Sir John Lubbock has gathered together his papers on the subject, and has published them, with additional matter bearing on the social Hymenoptera, under the title Ants, Bees, and Wasps, as one of the International Scientific Series.

Entomological Society, reprinted from the Transactions of the Society for December, 1880-a valuable contribution to the study of the British species. In this work he adopts a specific characteristic for the female of Formica aliena which I had brought forward in one of my papers, and which had been recognised as distinctive of the species by my late friend, Mr. Frederick Smith of the British Museum, formerly President of the Entomological Society, an eminent Hymenopterist, to whose unwearied kindness and invaluable assistance I shall ever remain indebted. He, some twenty years ago, first stimulated my interest in the study of British ants into active exercise, and ever encouraged and aided me in my pleasant and profitable investigations, until his much lamented death in January, 1879. I have since secured possession of the greater part of his valuable collection of foreign Aculeate Hymenoptera, in which is numbered about six hundred different species of ants from almost every part of the world, as well as nearly two hundred and seventy species of the allied families Mutillida and Thynnidæ, popularly called Solitary Ants, and classed by Mr. F. Smith under the Heterogyna. Mr. Smith's manuscript lectures, with their practical and pictorial illustrations, have tended also to enrich my happy experiences of the wonders of the formic world.

I have been thus explicit in directing the attention of the reader to these sources of new entomological wealth, that he may be prepared to find in the present publication, not merely a reprint of my former papers, but rather the outline of an old picture filled in with fresh lights and shadows.

The author desires to place on record his appreciation of the value of the illustrations which so enhance the interest of his work, and which with but few exceptions were engraved from the well-executed drawings of his wife: these exceptions being Fig. 34, in preparing which she availed herself of a skilful sketch by Miss E. E. White, and Figs. 39-43, which were taken from original diagrams by the late Mr. F. Smith.

If the reader can glean from the perusal of this imperfect attempt to give form and colouring to one of the most marvellous provinces of the wondrous empire of the King of Glory, some portion of the untold pleasure it has brought to my own mind in making it, I shall be more than satisfied, especially should the perusal lead to a more emphatic and practical recognition of the truth of the inspired declaration -'The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.'

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