The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1895-05-31
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES.
AG RICULTURAL ANTS.

Prof. W. J. McGee, of the government
scientific corps, recently paid visit to
some very remarkable farmers in Sonora,
Mexico. These are the so-called agricul-
tural ants, which plant fields of grain and
regularly harvest their crops, upon which
they depend wholly for food. In fact,
should the crop fail, they would perish of
| famine. On the other hand the cereals
that they grow have been specialized by
cultivation, like the wheat and other grains
of the human husbandman, and would
quickly disappear if the attention of the
insects was withdrawn.
The fields of the farmer ants cover scores
of square miles in Sonora, a large part of
which is quite densely populated by them.
The home of a colony is marked ordinarily
by circular clearing from five to thirty
feet in diameter, on which nothing is per-
mitted to grow. This serves as a sort of
parade and exercise ground. Aroun the
clearing is a ring of luxuriant grass from
three to twenty feet wide. On the seeds
it every spring and garnering the crop in
autumn. Across the rings which surround
formicaries run turnpikes few inches
wide, connecting farm with farm for many
furlongs.
In the region described there is practi-
cally no vegetation except the grasses cul-
tivated by these ants. The latter appear
to keep down and eXterminate all other
plants, such as cacti, greasewood and mes
quite. The plants naturally prevailing in
that part of the country are entirely alb
sent from the most thickly settled farming
districts In short, these insects have de-
veloped an art of agriculture peculiar to
| themselves, have made conquest of the
land for their needs and have artificialized
certain cereals as thoroughly as maize and
barley have been artiticialiZed by man.
Thus" says Prof. McGee, 'the rigorous
environment of the desert has developed
one of the most remarkable intelligences;
and incidentally, an animal and plant
have come to be mutually dependent upon
each other for existence The favorite
cultivated plant of these ants is the famil-
lar buffalo grass.
THE COURTING OF ANIMALS.
This subject seems to prove attractive
to many naturalists. In Vol. X of the
transactions of the Wisconsin Academy
of Sciences there is a highly interesting
! ln
''Courtship of Certain Spiders" 1t seems
to be the case that the sharpness of vision
in spiders is accentuated by love. A male
of Salts puleX was put into a box in which
was female of the same species twelve
inches away, and the male perceived her
at once, lifted his head with an alert and
excited expression, and went bounding
toward her. BY experiments it was
proved that this recognition was really due
to sight. These results are interesting,
because some have affirmed that spiders
cannot see nearly as far as twelve inches
! Further experiments seem to show that
! spiders can differentiate color. NJ. Raco-
vitZa a Roumanian naturalist, has been
studying the courtng and marriage Gus
toms of the octopus, and in a recent num-
Der of the "Archives de Geologic Expert
mentale" he gives us some of his observa-
tions. 1t is satisfactory to know that the
octopus does not, as some have thought,
behave brutally in its love affairs. NJ
| RacovitZa assures us that there is moth :
! II
that the male behaves with Il certain deli
cacy toward his mpanion.-Science Cos
| sip.