114 Journal New York Entomological Society, t^'o'- -^-"^iv, 



lucidus July 22, 1903. Aug. 20, 1903, I saw a large and very typical 

 flight of lucidus subsp. montivagus Wheeler near Colorado Springs. 

 Emery observed a colony of rufesccns, which, during 1907, had no 

 marriage flight but from which winged and dealated females issued 

 and accompanied the workers on their forays. In 1908 the satne 

 colony gave off a lot of males which flew away but no females ac- 

 companied the raids. The observations on the Calif ornian hreviceps 

 show that the males and females may stay long in the maternal nest, 

 that some of them may escape from time to time and mate outside 

 the nest and that both winged and fecundated, dealated females may 

 accompany the workers on their raids while a marriage-flight is taking 

 place. A single colony may thus exhibit during the course of a few 

 days combinations of the two extreme conditions noticed by Emery 

 during two seasons. I called attention to the protracted retention in 

 the nest of males and females of lucidus in 1908,^ but before making 

 the observations on the Calif ornian hreviceps I had never seen the 

 females accompanying the workers on their raids, though both Emery 

 and Forel had seen this repeatedly in the typical rufescens. These 

 authors have also failed to notice any inclination on the part of the 

 females to bring home pupae. My observations leave me skeptical in 

 regard to Emery's assumption that the female Polycrgus mates inside 

 the nest. 



Emery's observations on colonies kept in artificial nests show con- 

 clusively that the fecundated and dealated female of Polycrgus founds 

 her colony by entering a fusca formicary, killing its queen by pierc- 

 ing her head with the mandibles and securing adoption in her place 

 by the fusca workers. Does the female, while accompanying the 

 foraging army, gain acquaintance with the situations and personnel 

 of the various fusca nests in the area dominated by the Polycrgus 

 colony, so that she can at her leisure select and invade a propitious 

 colony in which to secure adoption ? Or does she actually secure 

 adoption in a colony which has just been plundered and is therefore 

 in a depressed and nonresistant state, as seems always to be the 

 case with fusca colonies after they have had to submit to this sudden 

 and severe calamity? The former method is suggested by the iso- 



' " The Ants of Casco Bay, Maine, with Observations on Two Races of 

 Formica san guinea Latreille," Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 24, igo8, p. 

 640 nota. 



