THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. G3 



The chrysalis was nearly half an inch long. Body semi-transparent ; 

 color uniform pale yellow, excepting the eyes and enclosed mandibles, 

 which were black ; the knee joints were faintly tipped with brown, and a 

 faint brown line down each side of the scutellum. All the parts of the 

 insect were plainly visible through the pupa case. The wings were very 

 small and diverged to each side of the scutellum in a similar manner to 

 that described on the 2nd of May. 



On the 29th of May two of these which had been seen as pupae on 

 the 24th, had become perfect beetles ; another had its wing cases green, 

 but its abdomen was yellow and soft ; two others were still unchanged 

 pupae. Early in June all were perfected, the beetles having escaped from 

 their enclosures by gnawing a neat round hole through the twig, just large 

 enough to allow of the passage of the body. 



Possibly the insects I examined on the 2nd of IMay might have 

 already passed through their pupa stage, and their subsequent slow 

 developement have been due to the altered condition of the twigs con- 

 taining them, owing to the dry atmosphere in which they were kept. 



■OBSERVATIONS ON FORMICA FLAVA, AND INFERENCES 



DEDUCTED THEREFROM. 



BY THOMAS G. GENTRY, GERMANTO\VN, PA. 



During the latter part of the month of May, of the spring of 1873, 

 while reclining upon the ground beneath the shade of a tree growing on 

 the outskirts of a thicket, the sun at the time beaming in all its glory and 

 splendor overhead, my attention was suddenly arrested by the activity 

 and excitement presented by a nest of the ordinary yellow ant, Formica 

 JJava. Scattered promiscously upon the earth before me were numberless 

 larvae in various stages of developement, and not a few of immobile 

 pupae, brought up from their subterranean domiciles by their ever active 

 and thoughtful nurses to receive the life-sustaining benefits of the sun- 

 light, while here and there were a' dozen or more of ants that had but 

 recently escaped from the prison-houses in which they had been confined 

 — frail, to be sure, and with a pallid, death-like appearance, in conse- 



