1903.] 283 



Ponera contracta, Latr., at Charing Hill, Kent.— On August 2ncl last Mr. C. 

 Morley accompnnied me to my previously recorded locality at Charing to look for 

 this rare ant, and we soon found it in moss on the hill side. Subsequently while 

 searching under stones for Coleoptera Mr. Morley came across a small nest or 

 deposit, consisting of some twenty-five or more pupae, with a fair number of attend- 

 ant ants, not, liowever, so numerous as the pupse. I dug up the nest with a trowel, 

 carried it home in my handkerchief, and placed it in an inverted glass shade about 

 4 inches in diameter and 6 inches deep ; meantime the ants carried the pupae into 

 the earth, and they never appeared again until the nest was broken up. I fed them 

 with sugar and dead insects, but I cannot say for certain whether they eat either, 

 though I thought the inside of a earwig was devoured. A certain number of small 

 flies and ichneumons from time to time came out of the earth, but these probably 

 had no connection with the nest. 



In the beginning of September, thinking they were possibly all dead, I removed 

 the sod of earth, but seeing two ants alive replaced it, and on September 20th I 

 finally took out the earth and broke it up to discover what had occurred. There 

 was, so far as I could ascertain no regular nest remaining, and all the pupa; had 

 hatched. The wingless queen and most of the ants were just beneath the surface 

 in the roots of the grass ; there were two <? ^ , one with wings undeveloped or 

 injured, the other perfect, and some twenty workers. I believe this is the first 

 record of the nest of the ant from Britain. 



On August 31st I found another small deposit of pupfc at Charing, and a few 

 ants. This nest had been weakened by the ants captured in the adjoining moss by 

 myself in July, and by Mr. Moi-ley in August. I took the nest home, and tried 

 keeping them in damp moss, but this was a failure : one or two workers emerged, 

 and several small parasitic Hymenoptera were bred from time to time, but the ants 

 died, and the pupse withered up. There was no queen in the nest which we found 

 near a nest of Myrmica rubra. At one time I thought it might be a mere deposit 

 of pupae brought out to hatch. The pupae in both cases were under a stone ; tiiey 

 were rather dark brown in colour when first found, but seemed to get lighter; the 

 newly emerged ant is very liglit in colour, like L.Jlavus. 



A third nest of the species has also been found by me near Doddington, with- 

 out pupae. This I have left ; in this case there were two or three workers under a 

 stone, with evident traces of very fine galleries drilled by the ants, which went down 

 into the earth in a very deliberate fashion on being disturbed. A dead Ponera 

 about a foot off had apparently been killed by a L. niger, of which there was a 

 strong nest near. It is difilcult to see how this curious little ant lives ; its movements 

 are very slow, and it is always in my experience (I have found it also at Chatham) 

 to be taken in places where other species abound. I have never found any signs of 

 larvae. It generally occurs in little parties of two or three ants. It may be that 

 the larvae are hatched or fed in or about the nests of another ant, but the dead ant 

 found at Doddington is, I suppose, against this view. I should be much obliged if 

 any one could refer me to any notes by a continental authority on the habits of this 

 ant, which was, I believe, never found by F. Smith, though he searched diligently 

 for it : see his work on Fossorial Eymenoptera, p. 20. Its head quarters seem to 

 be Kent, east of the Medway,* as I know of three localities. — Id. : Oct. 5^A, 1903. 



* It is curious to note also that all the genera of Myrmicidce occur within these limits. —A. J. C. 



CCS 



