Читать книгу Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders. Notes and Observations on Their Habits and Dwellings онлайн

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My renewed observations at Mentone were carried on from October, 1871, to May, 1872, and I was able during that interval to become a frequent visitor to a warm and sheltered valley, which lay but a few minutes' walk from the house in which I lived, and in which thirty nests of the most active of the seed-storing ants were to be found.

Full therefore of my intention to resolve this difficulty if possible, I set out on October 29, 1871, immediately after my return to Mentone, to revisit this valley, where, in the previous May, I had seen the ants busily engaged in cutting, carrying, and sorting their harvest.

The spot in question was a rough slope of soft sandstone rock, with accumulations of sandy soil in the hollows, covered with a sparse and scrubby vegetation, composed of Cistus (C. salvifolius), pot-herb thyme, black lavender (Lavandula stæchas), spiny broom (Calycotome spinosa), overshadowed here and there by a few scattered stone and maritime pines, and intermixed with coarse grasses and some smaller plants.