BEHAVIOR OF ANTS AND MYRMECOPHILES 437 



had long been supposed that this species was a temporary social 

 parasite of Lasius umbratus and its varieties. A queen of the 

 former species placed in umbratus colonies was not attacked at 

 once, as is generally the case when a queen ant is introduced 

 into a strange colony, but in some instances was attacked later 

 on. When some part of her body was being held by an inimical 

 worker, she endeavored to conciliate it by caressing with her 

 antennae, and often succeeded. Some of the queens on which 

 experiments were made were persistently molested and finally 

 killed, but several were fully adopted and had larvae and pupae 

 at the time the record of the expeiiment stopped. This shows 

 that juliginosus is a temporary social parasite of umbratus, 

 which itself is parasitic in turn on L. niger. Several pupae of 

 niger were placed in a nest of umbratus, in order to ascertain if 

 the latter had any friendly instincts remaining toward the 

 species in a colony of which it had begun its existence. The 

 pupae were carried about; but were left too long before being 

 opened so that most of the ants that emerged were crippled. 

 These weie bullied by the umbratus, but two perfectly healthy 

 individuals were living in the nest, unmolested, at the time of 

 writing. 



Emeiy (15) observed that the eggs laid by workers of a har- 

 vesting ant, Messor barbarus minor, produced only males. The 

 larvae were different in appearance from those which produced 

 females and workers, so he concludes that sexual dimorphism 

 is apparent also during larval stages. The same species was 

 offered oats which had germinated and from "which the husks 

 had been removed. These were chewed by the ants till they 

 became a ductile mass, from which the nutritive portions had 

 been extracted. Dried oats, not germinated, were put in the 

 nest. The ants ate first the embryo and the end of the grain 

 where this was located, a habit that had been noticed by the 

 ancients and which was mentioned by Plutarch. When the 

 embryos and the farinaceous parts of the seed were separated 

 and each ground up and made into a paste by the addition of 

 water, the ants showed a decided preference for the paste made 

 from the embryonic portion, especially when it was the more 

 humid of the two. The cutting of the radicles of the seed by 

 grain -storing ants may be the result of this fondness for the 

 germinal portion. Italian paste in small ring-shaped pieces 



