96 [April, 



HYMENOPTEKOLOGIUAL NOTKS. 

 i!Y THE REV. F. D. MOUIOE, M.A. , F.E.S. 



1. Furiiiica fiisca (^ ^ and $ ? in a nest of F. san guinea. — In the 

 past summer I have several times visited a large and somewhat 

 peculiar nest of Formica sanguinea., L., near Weybridge Station. The 

 ants have taken advantage of a large square of coarse sacking, 

 which some one has thrown down on the heath a few yards off 

 the road. Under this they live, tunnelling into the whole of the 

 ground which it covers, but with no roof to their nest except the 

 sacking itself. Throughout June and July the whole nest was 

 swarming with sanguinea workers, among whom might be seen com- 

 paratively a very small number of their usual "slaves" or "associates," 

 the $ $ of F.fusca, Latr. 



On July 13th I found, on uncovering the nest, a number of 

 winged forms, which 1 expected would all belong to sanguinea, as 

 Huber asserts more than once that winged forms of fusca do not 

 occur in the "fourmilieres mixtes," and Darwin makes the same 

 statement in " Origin of Species. " However, though a large propor- 

 tion of them were ^J ^ of sanguinea, four J J and two $ ? proved 

 to belong to the other species. Sanguinea $ did not appear at all, 

 and on my next visit (after an absence of some weeks) all the winged 

 forms had disappeared from the nest, though the workers were as 

 busy and numerous as ever. 



1 have looked through a good many accounts of the habits of 

 sanguinea (in Emery, Andre, Farren White, &c.) without finding 

 any clear confirmation or contradiction of Huber's view. He states 

 it very positively, and even declares that the sanguinea so times its 

 raids on fusca as to avoid any risk of carrying houie ^ or $ pupae of 

 the slave species. But in the present case both $ $ and J J of 

 fusca had undoubtedly been reared along with those of sanguinea. 



2. Melecta luctuosa, Scop., and armata, Pz. — It is generally said 

 {e.g., by Smith) that these species are respectively parasitic on Antho- 



phora retusa, lj.,aiid pilipes, F.,only. 1 believe it is true that luctuosa 

 does not occur with 2}iiip^s, but 1 am rather strongly of opinion that 

 armata infests both species. Meiusa in this neighbourhood is almost 

 as common as jjilijjcs, hut ap])ears somewhat later — the two periods of 

 appearance, however, overlapping considerably. The burrows of the 

 two species occur in the same banks and appear to be precisely 

 similar. About these banks M. armata simply swarms all through the 

 spring, and 1 have often found it flying there amid crowds of retusa 



