The World War has left Russia in a state of great deficiency of food for people as well as for farm animals. In order to prevent the latter from being destroyed because of want of food, great efforts are being made to find in wild plants and other natural gifts such surrogates as might take the place of cereals and other high-valued feeding stuffs. To get an insight into what wild animals and birds live upon, small stations were established in those parts of the country which have a reputation for abundance of game of all kinds. One of the stations in the Novgorod District makes a specialty of studying the conditions of life of wild game birds (wild ducks, partridges, quail) and poultry. As the country is largely covered with forests, mostly fir woods, where the large red ant is found in great numbers, special attention was drawn .