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



undoubtedly been adopted by the black workers and was in good 

 standing in the community, as was shown when she was confined in 

 a large bottle with a lot of the workers. 



2. Later on the same day I found somewhat further down the 

 Turtmann valley (alt. about 1,900 m.), between the foot of the 

 glacier and the hamlet Gruben, a second much smaller colony, com- 

 prising only 50-80 fnsca workers, several sexual larvae of this species 

 and a single nifa queen, which was also living on the best of terms 

 with the workers. There was no fnsca queen. Lying close together 

 in the very center of the nest in one of the superficial chambers were 

 four dead but perfectly fresh nifa queens, each with her body cut in 

 two at the petiole. Apparently, therefore, five nifa queens had suc- 

 cessively sought adoption in this nest, but four had been killed by 

 the fiisca workers (or by the nifa queen?) and only one had been 

 able to prove her right to adoption. 



3. August III found under a small flat stone a few hundred yards 

 from the foot of the Boden Glacier near Zermatt, at an altitude of 

 about 2,000 m., a little colony comprising only about a dozen fiisca 

 workers, two dozen very small ntfa workers, a ritfa queen and about 

 50 larvre and pupae of the latter species. This colony resembled in 

 every respect the small mixed colonies of F. consocians and inccrta 

 which I have repeatedly found at Colebrook, Conn. It was un- 

 doubtedly a colony in its second year, still containing the last sur- 

 vivors of the original fnsca colony, which were destined to die off 

 in the course of a few months or years and leave behind a pure 

 colony of rnfa. The two mixed colonies found in the Turtmann 

 valley had evidently just been formed. ' In all three cases the absence 

 of the fnsca queens was very striking, since in the various localities 

 which I visited in the Turtmann and Visp valleys nearly every colony 

 of fnsca — and I examined hundreds of them at different elevations, 

 even up to nearly 3,000 m. on the Gorner Grat — contained from two 

 to six dealated queens. These were always enjoying the warmth 

 of the superficial galleries, where they were at once noticed as soon 

 as the stones covering the nests were removed. 



These three colonies, therefore, point to a method of colony 

 formation by rtifa quite like that of F. consocians and trnncicola, and 

 lend no support to Wasmann's view that the nifa queen, under 

 natural conditions, behaves like sangninca. The first observation 

 shows, moreover, that the ntfa queen may be adopted by a large 



