178 HORACE DONISTHORPE. 



and on December 20 she was introduced with the workers into the 

 umbratus nest. She was a little attacked by workers who had not 

 seen her before, but the old workers protected her, getting between 

 her and the others, and pulling them away by the leg, but very soon 

 all hostility ceased, and she was evidently accepted. Many work- 

 ers surrounded her, caressed and fed her, and all went well till 

 April, when, a number of the workers having died off, some four 

 hundred more were obtained from the Weybridge nest and intro- 

 duced. These newcomers attacked the queen, though they were 

 quite friendly with their sister workers, and as they persistently 

 refused to accept her, she was removed and returned to her own 

 nest on April 21. The fuliginosits workers were very excited at 

 her appearance in their nest, and she was much pulled about, but 

 eventually lost sight of amongst the crowds of ants. On July 23 

 a female with her gaster enormously dilated was noticed in the 

 fuliginosus nest, with a large pile of eggs and surrounded by 

 workers, which may possibly have been the female of the above 

 experiment. In the next experiment a female fuliginosus was still 

 more easily received into the other umbratus nest, and by Decem- 

 ber 16 she was completely accepted. On March 22, 1911, another 

 fuliginosus was introduced into this nest and was immediately 

 accepted without any hostility whatever, as was the case with two 

 more which were introduced in April, but subsequently removed. 

 The two queens first introduced in this experiment began to lay on 

 March 17, 1911, for the first time, and these eggs hatched on 

 August 9. In 1912 they began to lay on June 29, and laid more 

 eggs than during the previous year, but nothing came of these. 

 Some of the larvse which hatched in August, 1911, were nearly 

 full grown in the summer of 1912, but they remained in this con- 

 dition until 1914. A larva first pupated on June 23, 1914, and 

 several more subsequently, but none of them reached the perfect 

 state. As these were from eggs laid in May, 1911, it will be seen 

 that they took over three years to develop as far as the pupal stage ! 

 'In 1913 I made a similar experiment with a nest of mi.vto- 

 umbratus obtained at Weybridge on August n, 1912, and subse- 

 quently strengthened with workers of umbratus from Wellington 

 College. On September 14, 1913, two fertilized females, from 

 the Oxshott nest before mentioned which had just removed their 



