1881.] NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 39 



act. The queen's abdomen is raised high, her head is stooped, 

 she lifts the abdomen up and down. The workers have clustered 

 under her body, giving her somewhat the appearance of a success- 

 ful candidate undergoing ' a chairing.' She has changed her 

 position ; tlie workers follow, quite surrounding her. Two are 

 beneath the abdomen, which is depressed now, the head being 

 elevated. The attendants sit down patiently to watch. The}^ 

 keep their antennie moving continually, while they amuse them- 

 selves by cleansing their persons. The queen moves ; a dwarf 

 seizes a fore-foot and attempts to control her course. This and 

 "nipping " with the mandibles, is the common mode by which the 

 guard directs the queen's motions. The eggs laid are in an 

 irregular mass about one-eighth of an inch thick. There are 

 twenty to thirty minute yellowish, ovoid objects, which adhere-to 

 each, other. The workers surround the mass, some appeared to 

 lick it. The queen straggles over the eggs, places a foot upon 

 the mass. A dwarf seizes the foot hastily and draws it back, 

 while another worker catches up the egg-mass and draws it aside." 

 The observation was made at 11.20 P.M.; at 1 A. M., when I 

 retired, no change had occurred. This is as much of this interest- 

 ing behavior as I was able to observe in this female. I have, 

 however, seen the actual deposition of the eggs bj' a queen of 

 Camponotus pennsylvanicus. ^ 



VIII. Acts of Beneficence. 



In the natural sites the workers showed great interest in the 

 preservation and removal of the rotunds, dealing with them very 

 much as with the larvae. As the honey-rooms were opened and 

 the rotunds disturbed from their roosts, the workers of all castes 

 rushed eagerl^^ to them, and dragged them into the unbroken 

 interiors. Sometimes several ants would join in removing one 

 rotund, pushing and pulling her along. One sketch (PI. YI, fig. 

 27) made in my notes, represents a major pulling a rotund, whom 

 she has seized with her mandibles by the outer abdominal wall, 

 wliile a dwarf-worker is mounted upon the globe, standing upon 

 her hind legs " a-tip-toe," as it were, pushing lustily. Another 

 sketch (PL YI, fig. 36), caught on the spot, represents a worker- 

 major dragging a rotund honey-bearer up the perpendicular face 



1 See a note in "Proceed. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Pliila.," 1879, p. 140. 



