d ant, which drags
grains of wheat and oats into its dwellings, lives in India. These ants
are so small that eight or twelve of them have to drag on one grain with
the greatest exertion. They travel in two separate ranks over smooth or
rough ground, just as it comes, and even up and down steps, at the same
regular pace. They have often to travel with their booty more than a
thousand meters, to reach their communal storehouse. The renowned
investigator Moggridge repeatedly observed that when the ants were
prevented from reaching their magazines of grain, the seeds begun to
sprout. The same was the case in abandoned magazines of grain. Hence the
ants know how to prevent the sprouting of the grains, but the capacity
for sprouting is not destroyed. The renowned English investigator John
Lubbock, who communicates this and similar facts in his work entitled
"Ants, Bees, and Wasps," adds that it is not yet known in what way the
ants prevent the sprouting of the collected grains. But now it is
demonstrated that here also it is only the formic acid, whose
preservative influence goes so far that it can make seed incapable of
germination for a determinate time or continuously.

It may be mentioned that we have also among us a species of ant which
lives on seeds, and stores these up. This is our _Lasius niger_, which
carries seeds of _Viola_ into its nests, and, as Wittmack has
communicated recently to the Sitzungsberichte der gesellschaft
naturforschender freunde zu Berlin, does the same with the seeds of
_Veronica hederaefolia_.

Syke states in his account of an Indian ant, _Pheidole providens_, that
this species collects a great store of grass-seeds. But he observed that
the ants brought their store of grain into the open air to dry it after
the monsoon storms. From this it appears that the preservative effect of
the formic acid is destroyed by great moisture, and hence this drying
process. So that among the bees the honey which is stored for winter
use, and among the ants the stores of grain which serve for food, are
preserved by one and the same fluid, formic acid.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

This same theory has been suggested many times by our most advanced
American bee-keepers. It has been hinted that this same formic acid was
what made honey a poison to many people, and that the sharp sting of
some honey, notably that from bass wood or linden, originated in this
acid from the poison sac. If this is the correct explanation, it