ANTS. 



but were promptly dispatched by the lucidus. The corpses were 

 dragged away by a lot of Myrmica sabulcti that had their nest about 

 the roots of a plant within 30 cm. of the incertu nest. JJy 3 P. M. the 

 last lucidus had di>appearecl into her nest. The whole expedition there- 

 fore consumed only forty minutes. 



During the summer of 1902 I found near Rockford, 111., a fine 

 lucidus-nitidiventris colony. Thirty of the amazons were transferred 

 to an artificial nest furnished with a wet sponge and a dish of honey, 

 for the purpose of studying their behavior when isolated from their 

 slaves. In the course of a few days the ants were famished and kept 

 vainly begging one another for food. They often licked the water 

 from the surface of the sponge and two that had accidentally stumbled 

 into the honey head foremost, so that their tongues were brought in 

 contact with it, lapped it up with avidity. They soon began to die of 

 hunger and when only sixteen of them survived I wished to see whether 

 they would adopt alien workers of subscricca and nitidircntris taken 

 from a garden far removed from any lucidus colony. At two o'clock 

 one afternoon three of the former (A', B', C' ) and three of the latter 

 (A, B, C] were placed in the nest. They began to run about in great 

 dismay, especially when they happened to touch one of the amazons 

 with their antennae. From the first, however, the subscricca seemed to 

 be much more frightened and to irritate the amazons more than did the 

 nitidiventris. One large lucidus that had lost her right antenna and 

 right tarsus seemed to be in a particularly vicious frame of mind, pos- 

 sibly because she had been spending much of the day trying to 'comb 

 an imaginary antenna with an imaginary strigil and had repeatedly 

 tumbled over while attempting this feat. This ant pounced on A' 

 and B' like a cat and killed them in quick succession. She pierced 

 the gaster of A' with her sharp jaws till its contents flowed out on 

 the floor of the nest. B' she pierced through the thorax. For some 

 time the surviving subscricca (C'} succeeded in evading the amazons, 

 which in the meantime had worked themselves up into such a fury that 

 they even attacked one another. I saw one of them grab a sister 

 worker by the neck and hold on for three quarters of an hour. The 

 amazons, though visibly irritated by the nitidiventris, did not seize them 

 by the body, but only by the legs and antennae. The smallest individual 

 (./ ) lost its left middle leg in such an encounter. At this point the 

 observations were interrupted. 



At <j P. M. both A and B were found dead' and C and C' were run- 

 ning about. C' skulked in the corners of the nest, but C was seen to 

 walk up to one of the amazons, protrude her tongue, and feed the 



