172 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Voi. xvii. 



OBSERVATIONS ON SOME EUROPEAN ANTS.* 



By William Morton Wheeler, 

 Boston. Mass. 



A sojourn of a few months during the past summer (1909) in 

 Switzerland and Italy has enabled me to continue my observations 

 begun in the former country during the summer of 1907. f For the 

 past forty years the ant-fauna of these countries has been so dili- 

 gently studied by Professors Forel and Emery, that one can expect 

 to find little that is new except in localities which their very busy 

 lives have prevented them from exploring. The following notes, 

 therefore, owe their interest to the fact that I was able to visit two 

 of the tributary valleys of the Rhone, which, I believe, have never 

 been explored by myrmecologists. Through the courtesy of Prof. 

 Ed. Bugnion, of Lausanne, I was asked to accompany the annual 

 field excursion of the " MurithieJine," a flourishing Valaisian natural 

 history society, to the Turtmann Glacier (July 19-21), at the head of 

 the stream of the same name, and later I spent a week (Aug. 10-18) 

 collecting at Zermatt, in the adjacent valley of the Matter-V^isp. 

 Three of the following notes relate to some parasitic ants found in 

 these localities; the fourth relates to a diminutive, non-parasitic form 

 that occurs on the island of Lido, near Venice. 



I. Formica rufa L. 

 A few years ago:}: I predicted that this conspicuous European ant, 

 which builds great mounds in the forests throughout the northern 

 and central portions of the continent and above an elevation of about 

 1,000 m. in the Alps, would eventually be found to be a temporary 

 parasite, during the earliest stages of its colonial life, on the common 

 F. fusca. I was led to make this prediction, first, because I had 

 found some of our North American allies of F. rufa (F. consocians, 



* Contributions from the Entomological Laboratory of the Bussey Institu- 

 tion, Harvard University, No. 11. 



t Comparative Ethology of the European and North American Ants, 

 Journ. Psych, u. Neurol., XIII, igo8, pp. 404-435, pis. Ill and IV, 6 text figs. 



% A New Type of Social Parasitism among Ants, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. 

 Hist., XX, Oct. II, 1904, pp. 347-375- 



