The Meeker Herald

TREE DWELLING ANTS.

South American Insect That Acts as

Plant Guardian.

Ant defenders of plants and trees

are some of nature's pretty marvels.

The Cecropia adenopus is a remarka-

ble tree of south Brazil, widely dis-

tributed through the tropics. Its slen-

der trunk is crowned with long leaves

at the end of the branches.

A few active ants run continually

along the branches and the leaves, but

if the tree is shaken slightly an army

of ants rushes out by small apertures

ready for a savage assault on the in-

truder. The ant is the terrible guard-

ian that the tree has retained to pro-

tect it from its most formidable ene-

my, the leaf cutter ant.

The defenders rarely leave their re-

treat, where they live on small whitish

egg shaped bodies about one-twelfth

of an inch long, known as Mueller's

corpuscles. These are formed of deli-

cate tissue, rich in proteids and all as

rations for the garrison of defender

ants to feed upon. The curious ar-

rangement by which entrance is made

to the hollow stem has been studied by

W. Schimper.

Just above the point of insertion of

each leaf extends nearly to the supe-

rior node a superficial groove, at whose

end is a rounded depression. There

the tissue is thin, like a diaphragm in

a tube, and it also is soft. The hole

by which the ant enters is always

pierced at this spot. The ants seem

to have made their entrance through

the groove originally because it was

at the top. In the course of this

plant's further development natural se-

lection augmented these natural ad-

vantages, so that finally the thin, frail

diaphragm as it exists today was de-

veloped.—Chicago Tribune.