36 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXIV. 



NOTES ON WEB-SPINNING ANTS. 



By Edward Jacobson. 



(Communicated by F. G. A. Barnard.) 



(Read before the Field Nutimdists' Club of Victoria, I3th May, 1907.) 



Having recently read the papers by Mr. F. P. Dodd on " The 

 Queensland Green Tree Ants," in the Victorian Naturalist for 

 January, 1902, vol. xviii., pp. 136, 141, it seems to me to be of 

 interest to give further details of the subject. 



The first observation of the web-spinning habits of (Ecophylla 

 smaragdi7ia, Fabr., seems to have been made by Mr. Ridley, of 

 the Singapore Museum, but I have been unable to find the record 

 in print. 



Subsequently independent observations on the same subject 

 were made by Mr. VV. D. Holland, of Balagonda, Ceylon, and 

 communicated by Mr. E. Ernest Green to the " Proceedings of 

 the Entomological Society of London for 1896," p. 9. Later 

 Mr. Green published, in the Journal of the Bombay Natural 

 History Society for 1900, vol. xiii., p. 181, an article entitled, 

 " Note on the Web-spinning Habits of the Red Ant, (Ecophylla 

 smaragdina," which contains personal observations. 



A short reference, with an illustration, is given in the " Cam- 

 bridge Natural History — Insects," part ii., by David Sharp. 



That the same habit prevails with an Australian ant seems to 

 have been observed first by Mr. Saville-Kent, and, so far as I have 

 been able to ascertain, his observations were even made previous 

 to those of Mr. Ridley, mentioned before. I have, however, been 

 unable to find Mr. Saville-Kent's original record, but his ob- 

 servations were discussed by Professor Marshall in an article, 

 " Spinnende Ameisen," which appeared in the German periodical 

 Dalieim, No. 52, of 27th September, 1902. 



In January, 1903, when staying at Samarang, in Java, I made a 

 number of observations about the nest-spinning habits of 

 CEcojyhylla smaragdina, which lives in Java, as well as on the 

 Asiatic continent (British India, Ceylon, Malacca, &c.) At the 

 time I thought I had made a new discovery, being unaware of 

 previous observations, but on communicating my observations 

 to Mr. C. Ritsema, of the Leyden Museum, I learned that I had 

 been anticipated long ago. 



In November, 1904, I found that the same process of web- 

 spinning was practised by a black ant of Java named Polyrhachis 

 dives, and was a new fact regarding this species My observations 

 were published in Notes from the Leyden Mtiseum, 1905 (vol. xxv., 

 p. 133), with an introduction from the able pen of Mr. E. 

 Wassman, in which he says the web-spinning, with the aid of 

 larvae, has also been observed with the African species, (Ecophylla 



