BEHAVIOR OF ANTS 417 



cells of earth made in the walls of the nest, where they remain 

 for some time, finally breaking their way out." Apparently 

 the cells are made by the ants, since these insects were seen 

 carefully plastering earth around the crustaceans. 



Crawley " records a number of observations on female ants 

 introduced into alien colonies of the same species, with results 

 which do not differ materially from those obtained by several 

 other observers. He mentions the occurrence of short-winged 

 females of Lasius niger and L. faviis and gives a few interesting 

 observations on L. fuliginosiis, which has its nuptial flight late 

 in May or early in June. Not all the males and females, how- 

 ever, leave the nest at this time, as some of them were found 

 by Crawley in or near the nests as late as September 14 and 

 October 13. At Ouchy, Switzerland, he saw workers of L. 

 fiiliginosus pulling dealated females into their nests. These 

 females apparently had flown originally from this same nest. 



Crawley "^ exhibited to the South London Entomological 

 and Natural History Society a colony of workers of Lasius 

 niger, which in 1908 had adopted a female L. tmihndus. " Up 

 to this autumn (19 10) the only ants which had come to maturity 

 in the nest were pure Lasius. niger, thus confirming Reichen- 

 bach's experiments (Biologisches Centralblatt, July 15th, 1902, 

 p. 461), that Lasius niger workers are able to produce workers 

 parthenogenetically." Crawley found that a similar colony dating 

 from 1896 gave similar results (Science Gossip, May, 1900). 



Donisthorpe "^ records several observations on colony for- 

 mation in ants, confirming the observations of Wheeler, Was- 

 mann, and others. A female Formica rufa, to which w^orkers 

 of F. rufibarbis var. fusco-rufibarbis were admitted in an arti- 

 ficial nest, struggled with and killed a few of the latter, but was 

 eventually adopted by the survivors. The paper concludes 

 with a few notes on myrmecophiles. The pseudoscorpion 

 {Chernes scorpioides) found " literally in thousands " in F. 

 rufa nests in Leicestershire, is treated with indifi'erence by the 

 ants. 



Donisthorpe '^ looked for a response from ants in captivity 

 to the Galton-Edelmann whistle, which, tested by the sensi- 

 tive flame, gives off vibrations far above the human range of 

 40,000-50,000 per second. The ants, however, "never appeared 

 to notice anything at all." 



