June, i9i6.] WhEELER: SlaVE-RaidS OF AMAZON AXT. 115 



lated dealated females sometimes found running about on the ground 

 at a distance from the maternal nest, as if looking for a host-col- 

 ony; the latter method would seem to have many advantages. Per- 

 haps both methods are adopted by different females. 



3. The finding on July 24 (p. 108) of a small and evidently incipi- 

 ent brcz'iceps colony consisting of an ergatoid or wingless female with 

 about a dozen workers and twice as many fusca slaves, is significant, 

 because the female was functioning as the mother of the colony and 

 must therefore have been fecundated. The ergatoid female of the 

 European amazon has been known for more than a century. It was 

 first recognized by Pierre Huber* and has been repeatedly taken by 

 Forel, Emery and Wasmann. According to Forel (Fourmis de la 

 Suisse, p. 137), "this singular creature, which is very constant in 

 type, is rather rare. Nevertheless, during certain years some speci- 

 mens of it are found in most of the formicaries. Its role, if it has 

 one, is unknown. Perhaps it can replace the queens in their func- 

 tions. Dissection has proved to me that its ovaries are identical with 

 those of the queen, etc." Wasmann^ describes one of these females 

 which he kept in an artificial nest with amazon workers and slaves 

 from April, 1885, to September, 1886. It was treated by the slaves 

 as a true queen, licked, fed and, when disturbed, carried to a place 

 of safety. Its eggs, however, produced only males, showing that it 

 had not been fecundated. In 1908 I published a similar observation!" 

 on a large colonj- of lucidus which I had under observation for five 

 years in a field near Bronxville, N. Y. : '" During four years this col- 

 ony produced numbers of males and females, both winged and erga- 

 toid, and the winged females lingered for weeks in the nest without 

 deflation. The first week of the past April [1908] I found the whole 

 community with its larvae and mother queen enjoying the spring 

 warmth in the superficial galleries just under the large flat stones 

 with which I had covered the nest in September, 1903. I captured 

 the queen and part of the colony and transferred them to an artificial 

 nest. Aug. 9 [1908] I again visited the nest, and to my surprise, 

 found it teeming with several hundred mature males clinging to the 



8 Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis Indigenes, 1810, p. 251. 



9 Die zusammengesetzten Xester und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen, 

 Miinster s.W., 1891, p. 84. 



10 Ants of Casco Bay, etc., loc. cit., p. 141, nota. 



