St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1885-03-21
FARMER ANTS.
The Interesting and Curious Creatures
Whose Habitat Is the Texan Plains.

Whose Habitat Is the Texan Plains.
DR.. Lincecum, of Texan fame, has
even improved upon Solomon by his
discovery of those still more interesting
and curious creatures, the agricultural
ants of Texas. America is essentially
farming country, and that athe agri-
cultural ants are born farmers. They
make regular clearings around their
nests, and on these clearings they allow
nothing to grow except particular
kind of grain, known as ant-rice. DIR.
Lincecum maintains that the tiny
farmers actually SOW and cultivate the
ant-rice. DR.. McCook, on the other
hand, is of opinion that the rice sows
itself, and that the insects, part is linn
tied to preventing any other plants or
weeds from encroaching on the appro-
priated area. In any case, be they
squatters or planters, it is certain that
the rice, when ripe, is duly harvested,
and that it is, to say the least, encour-
aged by the ants, to the exclusion of all
other competitors. CATER the maturing
and harvesting of the seed" says DR..
Lincecum, ''the dry stubbIe is cut away
and removed from the pavement,
which is thus left fallow until the ensu-
ing autumn, when the same species of
grass, and in the same circle, appears
again, and receives the same agricult-
ural care as did the previous crop"
Sir John Lubbock, indeed, goes so far
as to say that the three stages of human
progress-the hunter, the herdsmen and
the agriculturist- are all to be found
among the various species of existing
ants.
The Sauba ants of tropical America
carry their agricultural operations a
step further. Dwelling in underground
nests, they sally forth upon the trees
and cut out of the leaves large round
pieces about as big as a shilling. These
pieces they drop upon the ground,
where another detachment is in waiting
to convey them to the galleries of the
nest. There they store enormous guam
titles of these round pieces which they
allow to decay in the dark, so as to
form a sort of miniature mushroom
bed. On the moldering vegetable heap
they have thus piled up they induce
fungus to grow, and with this fungus
they feed their young grubs during
their helpless infancy. Mr.. Belt, the
naturalist in Nicaragua" found that
native trees suffered far less from their
than imported ones. The
ants hardly touched the local forests,
but they stripped young plantations of
orange, coffee and mango trees stark
naked. He ingeniousfy accounts for
this curious fact by supposing that an
struggle has long been
going on in the countries inhabited by
Saubas between the ants and the forest
trees. These trees that best resisted
the ants, owing to either some unp1eas-
ant taste or to hardness of foliage, have
in the long run survived destruction;
but those which were suited for the
purpose of the ants have been reduced
to nonenity, while the ants in turn
were getting slowly adapted to attack
other trees. In this way almost all the
native trees have at last acquired some
especial means of protection against
5he ravages of the leaf-cutters; so that
hey Immediately fall upon all imported
md unprotected kinds as their natural
prey. This ingenious and wholly salts
factory explanation must of course 90
ar to console the Brazilian planters for
he frequent loss of their orange and
coffee crops. = Cor7als5lI Magazine.
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