No. i.] A STUDY OF SOME TEXAN PONERINAE. 13 



May 25. O. Jiacniatodes reacts to lifeless objects just as it does 

 towards living insects. If the points of a pair of tweezers be 

 held in the nest and rapidly opened and closed, they at once 

 become the center of a swarm of snapping and leaping ants. A 

 small glass vial dropped into the nest at once begins to tinkle 

 under the blows of the alternately advancing and retreating 

 emmets. A lump of sugar is attacked in the same manner for 

 some moments, till the ants learn that it is edible, when they 

 settle down on it and lap its crystals with avidity. Even soft 

 viscid or liquid substances, like the yolk of egg, poured on 

 the floor of the nest, at once release the same peculiar response. 

 As soon as the ants perceive it with the contact-odor sense of 

 their antennae, they begin snapping at it as if it were a deadly 

 foe. In this case the tips of their mandibles are smeared with 

 the yolk. This causes them to feel some discomfort appar- 

 ently, and they wipe them on the hard floor of the nest, much 

 as a bird would wipe its beak in similar circumstances. It is 

 only after several repetitions of this performance that they 

 approach the yolk without closing the mandibles. Then they 

 begin to eat it, and some hours later they begin to cover it 

 up with little pellets of earth, for O. Jiaematodes, as well as 

 L. clongata and P. harp ax, share with the Myrmicine and For- 

 micine (and I may add, also, the Doryline ants!) the habit of 

 burying offensive substances. 



Observers 1 have called attention to the fact that ants de- 

 prived of their antennae are in some cases attacked and killed 

 by ants of the same nest. A few experiments were tried for 

 the sake of testing these observations on Odontomachus. One 

 of these ants, deprived of both antennae, was replaced in the 

 nest from which it had just been taken. It was at once 

 fiercely attacked by several ants as if it had been a strange 

 insect. It stopped, as if dazed, unable to meet its sister work- 

 ers with the customary antennal greeting. The ants, however, 

 soon perceived their error, and a few hours later one of them 

 was licking and fondling the mutilated ant. By the next 

 day the mutilated ant was dead, probably as a result of the 



1 Forel, Fourmis de la Suisse, p. 1 19, et al. Wasmann, Die zusammengesetzten 

 Nester und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen, pp. 151, 152, Miinster i. W., 1891. 



