ANTS. 



showered them \vilh formic acid, mauled tliem about, gnawed off their 

 legs and left them in a pitiable plight. This victory for the subscricca 

 was not only a surprise, but coming so soon after the death of the self- 

 sacrificing nitidii'cntris, made me feel much as I felt when a boy on 

 reading of the death of the suitors in the Odyssey. 



These observations on Incidns, with many others which space forbids 

 relating, show that this subspecies is much more belligerent and of a 

 more vicious disposition than brci'iccps or bicolor. This is the more 

 surprising because the ants which it enslaves are more cowardly and 

 docile than the slaves of the other subspecies. The behavior of the 

 ministering nitidiventris also shows that this form and not subsericea is 

 the natural slave of Incidns. 



3. The Founding of Amazon Colonies. Most authors have inferred 

 from the absence of the domestic instincts in the amazons that the 

 queens of these ants would be unable to establish a formicary without 

 the aid of alien workers. Forel and Wasmann have therefore insisted 

 that the rufcsccns queen must be adopted by a band of fusca, and they 

 have published several observations which go to show that such an 

 adoption can be rather easily brought about in artificial nests. These 

 observations have been recently confirmed and extended by Yiehmeyer 

 (1908). In this respect Polyergus rnfcscens resembles the temporary 

 parasites. Several experiments in which I introduced artificially dealated 

 queens of Incidns into nests containing inccrta workers with their brood 

 gave rather conflicting results. In some cases the Incidns queens 

 behaved like sangninca queens under similar conditions, to the extent 

 of killing the alien workers, but they paid absolutely no attention to 

 the brood. In other cases they were more passive and conciliatory, but 

 equally indifferent to the inccrta cocoons. It will be necessary, there- 

 fore to study this question further before making definite statements 

 in regard to the method employed by our American amazons in estab- 

 lishing colonies. But even if the method of rufcscens should be found 

 to obtain also in our subspecies, we should not be justified in deriving 

 it from that of the temporary social parasites, for we might conceive 

 it to have arisen secondarily by involution or degeneration from that 

 employed by sangninca. 1 



1 Professor Emery, in a paper just received (Nuove Osservazioni ed 

 Esperimenti sulla Formica Amazzone. Rend. Scss. R. Accad. Sci. hist. Bologna, 

 IQO9> PP- 3 I- 36), records an experiment which goes a long way towards solving 

 the problem here considered. July 13 he placed a dealated P. rufescens queen 

 in a Janet nest containing a F. fusca queen, fourteen workers and a few pupae. 

 The rufcsccns, on being attacked by the workers, offered no resistence, but 

 showed great interest in the fusca queen, who received her amicably. By July 



