60 



JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1890. 



building up, but slowly making their way along the line, and here 

 and there stopping and rearing themselves up against the walls, 

 pressing together, and smoothing out in a way which their great size 

 gave them special facility for doing. They used themselves much 

 iu the same way as I have seen my mali smooth over the earth with 

 a board when doing a little gardening with belatee (Europe) seeds, 

 or as some of the local rajmistris will also use a board in building a 

 wall. I visited this covered way on a good many successive days, 

 and always found the giants busy in this work ; they would stand on 

 their hind legs, spread themselves out, and bind together with an 

 even kind of pressure the little blocks or grains of building material. 

 If you picked one up she immediately attacked you in the same 

 thorough, loyal, but perfectly impotent, manner, and when you 

 replaced her she resumed her consolidating form of work. I had 

 (until finding this covered way) often wondered what special use 

 these big fellows served, but I now feel certain this battening 

 process is one. This covered way was cut to pieces and destroyed 

 by the carriages driving up and down every evening, and as 

 regularly repaired by the ants in the early morning. This went on 

 for several weeks, when the ants seemed to pass on, and I lost sight 

 of them. The workers, in traversing their covered way, carried 

 about with them quite an assortment of odds and ends, amongst 

 which I have noticed the larvae of a Khyparochromid bug in con- 

 tiderable numbers, sundry other larvae unknown, a species of weevil, 

 small shells (Bulimus) in some numbers, bits of stick or twigs, seeds, 

 head of an ant, &c. 



Donjhts (/nngicornis ?). 

 Before leaving for India, in 1872, my kind old friend, Mr. Frederick 

 Smith, gave me specimens of the workers and male of Dorylus, and 

 thoroughly imbued me with the necessity of discovering the female, 

 and I started for the East with the most perfect confidence of doing 

 so. On my way across from Bombay to Calcutta I stopped at 

 Jubbulpore to visit the Marble Eocks, and while at dinner at the 

 hotel a male flew in to the light ; this was my first introduction to 

 this ant, March 6th, 1872. 



I had not been long in Calcutta before I found a very promising- 

 lookiug nest under a large stone at the bottom of an empty tank on 



