SOME NOTES ON THE GENUS MYRMICA, LATK. 3 



near Stonehouse, in which the ants had the appearance of curling 

 smoke. As soon as the male and female are joined in the air, they 

 fall together to the ground. Dalglish^-' has recorded these ants swarm- 

 ing and dropping like rain on to a green-house. Crawley tells me that 

 on one occasion he was in a hammock in his garden reading, and 

 thought at first it had begun to rain, by the pattering on the leaves of 

 the trees, caused by J\l;/riiiica males and females falling down together. 

 Bond^' described a combat of ants which occurred near Hornsey in the 

 summer of 1828. This, however, was clearly a marriage flight of 

 Ml/r)iiica. He says that they met in mid-air and always fell to the 

 ground in pairs, one black and the other red. The former were of 

 course the males, the latter the females. The males die shortly after 

 the marriage flight, hut Lord Avebury" kept males of M. riKjinodis 

 alive from August till the following spring, one living till May, and 

 Janet'"' had males living from October till the following April. 



The females are capable of founding their colonies alone. This 

 was first demonstrated by Lord Avebury^'', who succeeded in rearing a 

 brood from eggs laid by females in captivity. In this experiment the 

 workers reared remained about six weeks in the egg, a month in the 

 larval state, and 25 to 27 days as pupaj. Janet" gives the times 

 occupied for the development of Myinrica workers as — eggs 22-24 days, 

 larvai 30-71 days, and pupte 18-22 days; total 71-3l7 days. The 

 brood are arranged in difterent heaps according to size, as is the habit 

 in some other ants. In observation nests the eggs and young larvae 

 are generall}' kept in the damper chambers, and the pupa3 in the dryer. 



Many females may be present in the same nest (Wasmann's^*^ 

 Secondary Pleometrose), which is caused by the re-seeking of their 

 own colony by ? $ , which have been fertilized near their oAvn nest. 

 This is especially the case with ]\[. laerinodia, which often possesses 

 large and populous colonies. Crawley observed a fine colony of this 

 species near Oxford, which extended over a large area. M. ruijinodis 

 and .1/. laevinodh are far the most war-like, and sting much more 

 severely than our other species, il/. scabrinodis is more cowardly, but it 

 robs other ants' nests, carrying off a worker which is killed and 

 devoured. ForeP^ records that he has often seen it enter a nest of 

 Lasiiis flovKs. Crawley noticed in Nottinghamshire, where a number 

 of both M. scabrinodis and L. fiavus nests occurred on a lawn, that, at 

 the entrances to the former nests, an accumulation of a yellow refuse 

 occurred, which kept increasing. On examination it proved to be 

 •composed of vast quantities of the heads of L. fiavus. These two 

 species have often been recorded as living close together. Gould-" 

 wrote as long ago as 1747 — " Very often the Eed Ants reside in a 

 distinct part of the Yellow Ant- Hills." Smith'-^^ says that M. 



12 Nat. Notes, 1896, p. 261. 



13 Ent. iMfifj., iv., 1837, p. 221. 



" Ants, Bees and Wasjis, 1882, p. 33. 



15 Obs. siir les Fourmis, 1904, p. 40. 



i« I.e., pp. 32-33. 



1^ I.e., pp. 36-37. 



18 Biol. Centralh., xxxv., 13., 1910, p. 454. 



13 Fourmis de la Suisse, 1874, p. 381. 



2° All Account of Enqlish Ants, 1747, p. 11. 



21 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 2., iii., 1855, p. 116. 



