THE HABITS Ol : ANTS IN GENERAL. 187 



are reared by the strange workers. Eventually the alien workers die 

 off and leave the queen and her own workers as an independent and 

 sufficiently established colony, capable of rapid and often enormous 

 multiplication. This I have called temporary social parasitism. 



Second, the poorly endowed queen may establish herself in a 

 colony of another species, but be unable, even after the workers have 

 matured, to survive the death of the host colony, except, perhaps, by 

 migrating to another nest of the same species. This is permanent 

 social parasitism. 



Third,, the queen may enter a small colony of alien workers, and, 

 when attacked, massacre them, appropriate their larvse and pupae, care- 

 fully secrete and nurse them till they hatch and thus surround herself 

 with a colony of young and loyal workers that can bring up her brood 

 for her without any drain on her food-tissues. This is the method of 

 colony formation adopted by queens of Formica sanguined. These 

 queens thus manifest an instinct, hitherto supposed to be exclusively 

 peculiar to the workers, namely, the instinct to rob the larvae and pupae 

 of another species and bring them up as auxiliaries, or slaves. 



Pierre Huber (1810) was the first to call attention to the method 

 of colony formation adopted by the great majority of ants, but while 

 we must still admire, in the light of our present knowledge, the ac- 

 curacy of his statements, we must not forget that he did not actually 

 observe the female ant bringing her firstling brood of workers to 

 maturity. Subsequent authors have not failed to notice this important 

 hiatus in the work of that gifted naturalist. Although Mayr in 1864 

 observed isolated female ants with eggs, the actual founding of a 

 colony by a single queen was first witnessed by an American of some- 

 what doubtful reputation as a myrmecologist, Dr. Gideon Lincecum 

 ( 1866, 18740). Essentially the same account is repeated in McCook's 

 larger work on the Texan agricultural ant (1879(7). 



The first to witness the founding of a colony in an artificial nest, 

 that is, under conditions accurately controlled, was Sir John Lubbock. 

 His account, originally published in 1879, is reproduced in the various 

 editions of his well-known book on ants, bees and wasps. August 14, 

 1876, he isolated two pairs of Alyruiica ruginodis and succeeded in 

 keeping them in a perfectly healthy condition through the winter. The 

 males died during the following April and May. The females laid 

 during the latter part of April. Some of the young had pupated by the 

 first of July and the firstling workers appeared and began to care for 

 the remainder of the brood by the end of that month and the first week 

 in August. This demonstrated, as Lubbock said, " that the queens of 



