root of dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous seeds—has been gnawed off, they are brought out from the nest and placed in the sun to dry, and then, after a sufficient exposure, carried below into the nest.
The seeds are thus in effect malted, the starch being changed into sugar, and I have myself witnessed the avidity with which the contents of seeds thus treated are devoured by the ants.
Figs. A, B, C, in Plate VI., p. 35, illustrate the manner in which the ants mutilate the germinating seeds and check their growth. Thus, at Fig. C 2 of Plate VI. a sprouting but uninjured canary seed (Phalaris canariensis) is drawn, magnified, and at Figs. C and C 1 the same of the natural size and magnified, after the ants have gnawed its fibril (fib.), which in this case pierces the undeveloped radicle (rad.). Fig. A 2 represents a sprouting hemp-seed, magnified,[1] and Figs. A, A 1, the same of the natural size and magnified, mutilated, the tip of the radicle being removed.
At Figs. B, B 1, B 2, the same process is shown in the case of a small wild pea.
It is, however, certain that though a few individual seeds may sprout in the nests from time to time either with or without the concurrence of the ants, the great mass remain for many weeks, or even months, quite intact, neither decaying nor germinating, whereas every one knows that if a quantity of seeds are placed in the soil in a moist and warm place, all the seeds that are of one kind will almost simultaneously begin to grow after the lapse of a fixed interval.
Now if this took place in an ant's nest, the provisions
- ↑ Properly a nut, for it comprises the seed and the enveloping coat of the ovary. The canary seed also, spoken of above, is a grain containing a seed.
