116 Journal New York Entomological Society, t^oi. xxiv, 



lower surface of the stone, but with no winged or dealated females. 

 Besides the males I found only a single large ergatoid female, several 

 dozen workers and slaves [Formica incerta] and half a dozen cocoons 

 enclosing nearly mature male pupae. Without doubt, the ergatoid 

 had usurped the role of the mother queen, and being unfertilized, 

 had produced only male offspring. The comparatively small number 

 of slaves had been able to rear an enormous number of these little 

 creatures although the absence of incerta pupae in the nest indicated 

 that the Polyergus workers had made no forays during the past sum- 

 mer." Emeryii cites an unpublished observation of Wasmann concern- 

 ing an ergatoid female of rnfescens which produced workers and must 

 therefore have been fecundated. This observation supports my inter- 

 pretation of the origin of the hreviceps colony taken on Angora Peak. 

 Cal., July 24. Emery believes that the ergatoid females may be 

 fecundated in the maternal nest, but this might occur quite as easily 

 outside the nest and on the ground during a marriage flight of the 

 males. 



Considerable interest attaches to the ergatoid female of Polyergus 

 because it is so much like the only females known to occur in certain 

 tropical ant genera such as Leptogenys, Onychomyrmex and Para- 

 nomopone. It suggests that the ants of these genera once possessed, 

 like Polyergus, two kinds of females, one winged and one wingless, 

 and that the colonies for some reason no longer develop the former. 

 In the singular parasitic Hapagoxenus sublccvis the two forms still 

 occur but in dififerent geographical regions, the winged form in Sax- 

 ony, as Viehmeyer has shown, and the wingless form in Sweden, as 

 was first established by the classical observations of Adlerz. 



Postscript. 



After the preceding pages were written I received a fourth inter- 

 esting paper from Professor Emery on the amazon colony which he 

 had under observation from 1908 to 1914.^- In 1908 and 1909 he suc- 

 ceeded in establishing in artificial nests two amazon colonies with 

 the aid of two fecundated queens that had secured adoption by fnsca 

 workers. In March 191 o, he combined the two formicaries and the 



11 Osservazioni e Esperimenti, etc., 1908, loc. cit., p. 7. 



12 Histoire d'une Societe Experimentale de Polyergus rufescens. Rev. 

 Suisse Zool., 23, 1915, pp. 285—400, 2 figs. 



