wild lentil (Ervum), spiny broom (Cytisus spinosus), Valerianella carinata, Centaurea aspera, Odontites lutea, Calamintha Nepeta, Polygonum convolvulus and P. aviculare, amaranth (Amaranthus Blitum and patulus), pellitory (Parietaria), Euphorbia, pine (Pinus), wild sarsaparilla (Smilax aspera), Setaria verticillata and S. italica, Andropogon Ischæmum, and of eight other plants of which I do not recognise the seeds. This list, comprising plants belonging to eighteen distinct families, might be greatly prolonged if I were to add to it the names of the seeds which I have seen the ants carry towards their nests, but have not actually detected in the granaries. Thus I have seen trains of ants burdened with the long-beaked, spirally-twisted fruits of crane's bill (Erodium), and, as above mentioned, with capsules of chickweed (Alsine media) and shepherd's-purse (Capsella Bursa pastoris), with whole orange pips, and even haricot beans, seeds of the New Zealand veronica (V. Andersonii), of Silene pseudoatocion, and many other garden plants, also with nutlets of the plane tree and seeds of the cypress.
Pliny mentions[1] incidentally having watched the ants carrying away cypress seeds, and comments upon the fact that so small a creature should be able to interfere with the growth of such a noble tree.
I have little doubt that the seed stores of the ants in botanic and other gardens, where rare plants are cultivated in southern Europe and in warm climates generally, contain samples taken from the fruits of a great many of the rarer and more interesting species as well as of the weeds and native plants. Indeed I
- ↑ Pliny, Nat. Hist., xvii. 14, 3.
