DIMORPHIC QUEENS IN AN AMERICAN ANT. 151 



The winged forms hasten up the slender grass-blades on which 

 they rock for a few moments, while filling their tracheae with the 

 pure air of the upper world, then one by one spread their glitter- 

 ing wings and soar into the air like sparks rising from a fire. 



While watching a colony during this interesting culmination of 

 its annual development, the senior author noticed females of two 

 different kinds issuing in numbers from the same openings of the 

 grass-covered mound. The majority of these females were the 

 remarkably pilose individuals, of a rich fulvous red, with extremely 

 broad and flat legs and abnormally short, feeble tarsi, which have 

 always been regarded as the true females of L. latipes. Among 

 these, however, there were several hundred females which were 

 perceptibly smaller, of a deep brown color, much less pilose, with 

 only moderately broadened and compressed legs and with much 

 longer tarsi. Both forms mingled with the workers and males 

 and took flight together within the same half hour. Although 

 the unusual character of this observation was fully appreciated at 

 the time, circumstances made it impossible to excavate the nest 

 and search its penetralia for the mothers of these very different 

 virgin females. It seemed best to leave the nest for careful study 

 at some future time and to collect a large number of the workers, 

 males and females at the surface. 



In this paper we will designate as the /9-female the highly aber- 

 rant form (Fig. i, C~] with the excessively flattened legs, i. e., the 

 form which has hitherto passed as the true and only female of 

 latipes ; the other (Fig. i, B} we will call the a-female. These des- 

 ignations will suffice for present purposes and will leave the facts 

 uncolored by the conjectural meaning of this singular dimorphism. 



A few days after the above recorded observations were made 

 the senior author returned to Texas, and soon afterwards, with 

 the aid of the junior author, undertook an examination of all the 

 material of L. latipes collected during three consecutive summers 

 in three different localities. This was easily possible because the 

 specimens from different nests had been kept by themselves in 

 separate vials of alcohol. There were, in all, collections from ten 

 separate nests, as recorded with the date of capture and the per- 

 sonnel of each colony in the following table : 



Nest No. i. Woods Hole, Mass., Aug., 1900. , d\ /?-?. 



Nest No. 2. Woods Hole, Mass., Aug., 1900. , /3-9. 



