THE TEMPORARY SOCIAL PARASITES. 



445 



hairy females, like ciliata, crinita, dakotensis and spccularis, probably 

 have similar habits. Muckermann, in fact, discovered in Wisconsin 

 some five colonies of spccularis mixed with subsericea, and with 

 females of the former species only. Although Wasmann has endeav- 

 ored to make out that these nests represented cases of incipient slavery, 

 there can be no doubt that the observations, as they stand, will bear no 

 such interpretation, but point rather to temporary social parasitism. 



FIG. 263. Formica ciliata. (Original.) a, Dealated female ; b. large worker 

 drawn to same scale ; c, head of worker : d, petiole of same seen from behind ; e, 

 petiole of female. 



There are no published observations on the origin of rufa and pratcnsis 

 colonies. It is not improbable, however, that these ants in the early 

 stages of colony formation are parasitic on fusca. In Switzerland, 

 during the summer of 1907, 1 found on two or three occasions a recently 

 killed, but not mutilated, pratcnsis queen in the recesses of a fusca 

 nest, and Professor Escherich showed me a typical rufa queen which 



