' Sir John Lubbock, indeed, goes so far as to say that the
three stages of human progress--the hunter, the herdsman, and the
agriculturist--are all to be found among various species of existing
ants.
The Saueba 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 quantities of these round pieces, which they
allow to decay in the dark, so as to form a sort of miniature mushroom
bed. On the mouldering vegetable heap they have thus piled up, they
induce a 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
depredations than imported ones. The ants hardly touched the local
forests, but they stripped young plantations of orange, coffee, and
mango trees stark naked. He ingeniously accounts for this curious fact
by supposing that an internecine struggle has long been going on in the
countries inhabited by the Sauebas between the ants and the forest trees.
Those trees that best resisted the ants, owing either to some unpleasant
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 nonentity, while the ants in turn were getting
slowly adapted to attack other trees.
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