288 Queries and Answers. 



moving to and from the nest in this singular manner : they did 

 not move far, but merely from one end of the bridge to the 

 other, upon the wooden bars of it. — H.B. Blois, Dec. 1. 1832. 



Mr. Robert Mallet, jun., Capel Street, Dublin, in de- 

 scribing the incidents of a tour which he has recently made 

 on the Continent, thus speaks of some ants which he met with 

 in passing from Martigny, through the Tete Noir, into Cha- 

 mouni : — " Proceeding along the side of the torrent, for a 

 considerable distance, by a nearly level path^after a steep and 

 long descent, and having crossed a rude wooden bridge, the 

 Tete Noir itself, the stupendous precipice from which the pass 

 takes its name, at once opposes itself to view : a mighty mass 

 of solid unbroken rock, it stands, projecting into the valley, in 



sheer descent above six hundred feet I sat down on 



the planks of the rude wooden bridge, to sketch the noble 

 outline of the T£te Noir, and was soon surrounded by numbers 

 of huge ants, which came out of, and retreated into, innumer- 

 able small holes in the pine timber of the bridge. These ants 

 infest dead pine timber in the south of Europe, and are nearly 

 as great a destruction to it as the lion ant of tropical climates 

 is to every other kind of wood. It is the formica herculanea, 

 I believe : its colour is a very dark chestnut, sometimes nearly 

 black. The male is nearly seven eighths of an inch long, the 

 female larger, and does not sting when about the person, as 

 our ants do : it feeds, apparently solely, on the dead timber of 

 pine trees, and seems less inclined to attack timber under 

 cover than when exposed to the sun and air. Like our own 

 ants, it has an acrid taste, owing to its containing formic acid. 

 The nests of this species of ant are composed of dry leaves, 

 of the pines chiefly, heaped together to about 15 inches in 

 height, and in the centre is contained the nursery of young 

 ones." (From a Communication to the Gardener's Magazine, 

 /lot yet published.) 



Instruments in the Ovipositor of the A'crida verrucivora. — In 

 the ovipositor of the vi'crida verrucivora there are two in- 

 struments, one to each division of the ovipositor, on the use of 

 which I should be glad to receive information. The instru- 

 ments are flat, end in a sharp point, and each is enclosed in a 

 groove. — E. S. T. March, 1833. 



In Kirby and Spence's Introduction, vol. iv. p. 152, 153., are 

 remarks on the structure of the ovipositor of the " ^f cridae and 

 cognate genera;" but it is not clear that they answer the 

 query of E. S. T. : this it is hoped some entomologist will 

 do. — J. D. 



