43 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1890. 



gradually deserted my tree, and passed on to others ; ra/o- nigra was 

 left in undisputed possession, but the colony was never so populous 

 and prosperous again, and on my leaving India, in 1886, had not 

 entirely recovered from these invasions of the yellow ants. 



In the ' Entomologist's Monthly Magazine' for 1876, pp. 87, 88, 

 I have very fully described a curious phase in the history of this 

 ant, and the beautiful sand-wasp, Ampulcx compresses; how, on the 

 1st June, 1876, on the trunk of an old peepul-tree (Mem religiosa), 

 on the road to Pultah and Barrackpore, I found a number of these 

 wasps and ants engaged in a scries of battles, or what really describes 

 it more accurately, wrestling-matches, the wasps jerking the ants 

 clear off the tree one after the other ; there w r oidd be a little fencing 

 and dodging for a hold, especially w r hen two ants at the same time 

 faced a wasp, but Ampulcx ahways succeeded in jerking them off the 

 tree. The ants did not appear to be hurt, and I watched several re- 

 ascend the tree and try another fall with their too-powerful oppo- 

 nents. This tree was always much frequented by both Ampulcx and 

 Pscudomijrma, but I have never seen any " tumasha," as the natives 

 would call it, of this sort going on there, either before or since ; but 

 on May 20th, 1883, on a peepul-tree in Barrackpore Park, I ob- 

 served a single specimen of Ampulcx jerking ants off the trunk, 

 mostly rufo-nigras, but in this case there was some apparent reason ; 

 both ants and wasps were attracted to the same spot by some sort of 

 sticky secretion exuding from the bark, and ants and wasp conse- 

 quently collided, with the result that the former were jerked off as 

 described ; only a few of the rufo-nigras offered any opposition or 

 made any fight, and as before, none of the ants appeared to be much 

 the worse for their falls. 



Pscndomijrma carbonaria, Smith. 

 Si ma carbonaria, Smith. 



This species is not uncommon in Bengal, and forms its nests in 

 trees, as with rufo-nigra. I have only found one or two nests, and 

 these were not populous ; my best one was situated in an india-rub- 

 ber tree {Fie as), on the drive from Government House to the Outram 

 Statue, Calcutta. I have only taken one specimen of the winged 

 female. The sting of this ant is sharp and pungent, but not to be 



