A CRUSTACEAN-EATING ANT. 253 



ever the nest is disturbed, and carried away like the very slender 

 larvae and cocoons, with their bodies tucked away between the 

 legs of the workers. The males leave the nests at night, like 

 the peculiar males of Eciton --another genus in which the females 

 are apterous and are often lured into the houses by the elec- 

 tric lights during, the late spring and early summer months, 

 especially during the latter part of May and early June. It 

 would be extremely interesting to learn something of the mating 

 habits of these highly heliotactic males and wingless females. 

 Do the males, during the breeding season, seek out and enter 

 strange nests of their own species in order to fecundate the 

 virgin females? This seems improbable when we stop to con- 

 sider that male ants are so very stupid that they are unable to 

 find their way back to their parental nest when once they have 

 strayed away from it. Are the wingless females fecundated by 

 the males of the same colony, /. c., by the offspring of the same 

 mother ? This is possible but improbable, since this would be a 

 flagrant case of inbreeding. It seems more likely that the vir- 

 gin females leave the parental nest and wander about as pedes- 

 trians, till they are found and fecundated by the winged males, 

 as in the case of the 'Mutillidae. The same problems and an- 

 swers seem to be suggested by the large winged males and 

 dichthadiiform females of Eciton and Dorylns. 



My former paper contained no account of the feeding habits 

 of L. elongata in a state of nature. In my artificial nests 

 the insects and their larvae were fed on termites. I have 

 since found that these ants, under natural conditions, feed very 

 largely, if not exclusively on the common wood-slaters (Onis- 

 cns and Arjiuidil/uiiiini) which abound under stones and logs 

 in the shady places where the formicaries are excavated. I 

 have repeatedly seen workers of L. elongata returning to their 

 nests, carrying dead slaters in their mandibles. The earth sur- 

 rounding the entrances to the nests is invariably white with 

 innumerable bleaching limbs and segments of the crustaceans, 

 showing that great numbers of these animals must be habitually 

 destroyed by the ants. Their long, toothless mandibles resemble 

 scissors and seem to be admirably adapted for cutting through 

 the intersegmental membranes of their prey and exposing the 



