Dec, 1909.] Wheeler: Observations on European Ants. 175 



and vigorous fiisca colony. The presence of sexual larvae in the 

 second colony shows that the adoption of the alien queen must have 

 taken place a short time before I found the nest, and the presence of 

 four dead riifa queens in this nest indicates either that the intrusion 

 of this species must be very vigorously resisted by the fiisca, or that 

 the riifa queen after once gaining adoption violently resents the 

 intrusion of any other queens of her own species. July 19, during my 

 w^alk up through the Turtmann valley, I saw numbers of dealated rufa 

 queens running over the ground, so that the marriage flight of this 

 species must have occurred either on that or the immediately preced- 

 ing days. It is not improbable, therefore, that the rufa queens which 

 I found in nests (i) and (2) had left their parental colonies only a 

 few days before I found them associated with the fiisca workers. 



If my interpretation of the behavior of the nifa queen is correct, 

 we must completely abandon Wasmann's hypothesis that dulosis is 

 derived from temporary parasitism, since rufa no longer appears as 

 a primitive and generalized type which could have given rise to both 

 the passive temporary parasitism seen in F. consocians, truncicola, 

 etc., and the aggressive, predatory parasitism of sanguinca, but be- 

 longs unequivocally to the consocians type. I am inclined to believe 

 that Wasmann has been unconsciously led to his view through giving 

 undue weight to the purely taxonomic status of F. rufa in our classi- 

 fication of the various species of Formica. As an old Linnean species 

 it has come to be regarded as the type of a group of forms {trunci- 

 cola, pratcnsis and a long series of American subspecies and varie- 

 ties), but this is, of course, a purely artificial assumption, and we are 

 not to conceive the European rufa as the most primitive ant of its 

 group. Indeed this ant is more probably to be regarded as one of the 

 most highly specialized and recent forms in the genus. I have else- 

 where* given my reasons for dissenting from Wasmann's opinion 

 that the predatory instincts of sanguinca have arisen from the passive 

 form of adoption seen in consocians and truncicola. Very recently 

 Emeryt has advanced arguments very similar to my own. Emery 



* The Ants of Casco Bay, Maine, with Observations on two Races of 

 Formica sanguinca Latreille. Bull. Anier. Miis. A^at. Hist., XXXIV, 1908, p. 

 633 et seq. 



t Intorno all' origine delle Formiche dulotiche, parassitiche a mirmecofile, 

 Rendic. Sess. R. Accad. Sci. 1st. Bologna, \~ Gen., 1909, pp. 36-51; transla- 

 tion : Ueber den Ursprung der dulotischen, parasitischen und myrniekophilen 

 Ameisen, Biot. Ccntralbl., XXIX, 1909, pp. 352-362. 



