WANDERING, DRIVER OR VISITING ANTS. 161 



"golden ant," The nests are often found under 

 stones and logs. The larvae and cocoons are easily 

 obtainable, and these ants are good types to set up 

 in simple artificial nests, as they settle down com- 

 fortably after the first rushing round. The genus 

 can be distinguished by the prominent spines on 

 the thorax and node (See Plate i8, Fig. 6 a), hence 

 the name "Polyrhachis." These ants are fond of 

 honey-dew ; we have observed them on the nectar 

 secreting froghoppers and lerp insects. 



Formica is a species of camponotid found all over 

 the world, and some of these are slave hunters. 



Oecophylla is an interesting camponotid which 

 "sews" the edges of leaves together to form a nest 

 and as the adults cannot produce silk to do this 

 they have an ingenious method of using their larvae 

 for that purpose. A set of workers hold the edges 

 of the leaves together, while other workers come 

 along holding a larva, and the latter spins the thread 

 to hold the edges of the leaves. Froggatt records, 

 "They live in large communities among the foliage 

 of the trees, in nests formed by webbing the leaves 

 together into an irregular mass, varying in size 

 from a cricket ball to a man's head. The worker 

 for its size is the most pugnacious creature in the 

 insect world ; if one damages a nest pushing through 

 the scrub, down tumble a swarm of Green Tree 

 Ants on one's head and neck, and wherever they 

 drop they stick their jaws in and hang on, and each 

 one has to be picked ofif in detail. In these forests 

 they destroy an immense number of insects, catch- 

 ing the little bees as they come out of their nests 



