176 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Voi. xvji. 



seems, however, in his discussion of F. nifa to have been influenced 

 by the results of Wasmann's experiments on females of this ant 

 placed in artificial fusca nests, for he does not see the basis of the 

 whole matter of temporary, permanent and dulotic parasitism in the 

 general tendency of ant-queens to court adoption by workers of their 

 own species of the same or other colonies — a tendency which Wasmann 

 and I have attributed to the very general or widespread formicine 

 habit of retaining a number of queens in the same colony — but 

 regards the founding of nifa colonies with fitsca workers as the 

 primitive method, the founding of new nests by fission of the maternal 

 colony and adoption of queens of the same species as a secondary 

 development. Possibly the nifa queen, like the queen of sanguinca 

 and of other species of Foniiica may be, as I have suggested,* an 

 opportunist to the extent of regulating her behavior according to the 

 behavior of the particular fusca colony which she enters. If the 

 fusca are aggressive she may act more like sau guinea, whereas if 

 they are timid or indifferent she probably permits herself to be 

 passively adopted. f 



II. Strongylognathus huberi Forel. 

 This interesting parasite on the conmion European Tcfranwrium 

 cespituui, was original! v described In' Forel from workers (Fig. i, A) 

 taken from a colony which he found on a warm, rocky slope near 

 Fully in the valley of the Rhone. :{; In 1900 he found the males and 

 females (Fig. i, B) in another nest in the same locality§ and gave an 

 interesting account of the behavior of the workers. August 8, 1902, 

 Prof. Carl Escherich also succeeded in finding a large colony contain- 

 ing many males and females in the same locality. Although I visited 

 the place June 16, 1907, and again July 23, 1909, in company with 

 Prof. Forel and Messrs. H. V^iehmeyer and F. Schimmer, and sought 

 very diligently for other colonies, I was unsuccessful. I was therefore 



* The Ants of Casco Bay, etc., loco citato. 



t A recent reply by Wasmann (Ueber den Ursprung des sozialen Para- 

 sitismus, der Sklaverei und der Myrmekophilie bei den Ameisen. Biol. 

 Centralbl., XXIX, Oct. and Nov., 1909) to Emery's criticisms, was received 

 too late for consideration in connection with this note on F. nifa. 



j: Les Fourmis de la Suisse, 1874, p. 71. 



I Strongylognathus hiibcri et voisins. Bull. Soc. Ent. Suisse, X, 7, pp. 

 273-380. 



