THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 217 



FORMICA SANGUINE^.— Latr. 



BV- FREDERICK CLARKSON. NEW YORK CITY. 



In a piece of uncultivated land, bordering a wood in proximity to 

 Oak Hill. Columbia Co., New York, there are two large nests of these 

 ants. They are in size about 4x2 feet, and during the eight summers of 

 my residence at this place they have not outwardly increased much in 

 size. The gardenei has observed them for thirty-five years, and it is not 

 improbable that they have existed for a half a century or more. I had a 

 longing desire to open them and explore their deep caverns and winding 

 galleries, but the gardener regarded such action as an ill-omen to the 

 place, and an infringement upon the rights of communities that he had 

 long protected and cared for. On one occasion I captured a dozen 

 workers from one of these nests and carried them away about a thousand 

 feet. I then threw them out of the glass jar in which I had captured 

 them upon a carriage way, and, standing the jar down, watched to see 

 what course they might take to the nest. To my astonishment every 

 individual, after much wandering, entered the jar. I repeated the experi- 

 ment ; several re-entered the jar, the others travelled away in different 

 directions and became lost in the grass bordering the road. The ants are 

 social and live in communities, and I take it that they returned to the 

 jar as being the last place in which they were in company. 



DEATH OF DR. JOHN L. LECONTE. 



It is with feelings of the deepest regret that we announce the death of 

 Dr. J. L. Leconte, the eminent coleopterist, who died on the 15th of 

 November, in the 59th year of his age. His valuable and voluminous 

 writings have given him a world-wide reputation, while his uniform kind- 

 ness and self-denying labors, in aiding students in his department, have 

 won him the esteem of all who have had the pleasure either of meeting him 

 personally, or of corresponding with him. The writer well remembers the 

 kind encouragement which our departed friend gave him some twenty years 



