8 THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECORD. 



College into my F. fnsca observation nest from Porlock, She as 

 usual tried to conciliate the ^ s when attacked by them. On May 7th 

 she was still somewhat attacl^ed. On May 9th the same, and was 

 held by the legs by some of the ? s at times. She was not very 

 aggressive, but killed one of the more persistent ^ s. By May 13th 

 she was accepted and quite at home. She lived in the nest till July, 

 when, unfortunately, she died. This nest contains two dealated F. 

 fusca 2 s ; the F. rufa 2 used to sit with them, and I was anxious to 

 see if she would have eventually killed them. In my mixed ^-^nest^^ of 

 F. fusca var. fusco-rufibarbis ^s taken at Whitsand Bay, July ISith, 

 1909, and a F. rufa 2 taken at Nethy Bridge, May 16th, 1909, the 

 latter has brought up three families with the help of the ^ s. She 

 laid eggs last on July 27th and September 7th, 1911. On 

 August 16th over twenty cocoons were present, and by September 25th 

 five small F. rufa callows had hatched, and over thirty cocoons were 

 present. By November 1st, all the F. rufa cocoons had hatched, and 

 they are all perfect, though small, and alive to-day, the F. fHsca- 

 rufibarbis ^ s being quite friendly with them. The 2 , unfortunately, 

 died on October 5th, when I had had her for over two years, but this 

 experiment has successfully proved this method of colony founding. 



On June 15th I witnessed, at Aviemore, a marriage flight of 

 Formica rufa for the first time. A number of <? s and 2 s were seen 

 flying about in a timber yard. They were running about on the large 

 mound of sawdust in the hot sunshine, flying off and settling on it. 

 The $ s appeared to rise more easily than the 2 s, and to be hunting 

 round for the latter. Copulation took place on the ground ; I never 

 saw a single pair together in the air. Sometimes a 2 would rise and 

 fly straight into the air, others ran about on the mound. A 2 when 

 found would sometimes refuse a <? . I picked up one pair in copu- 

 lation when the 2 turned round and bit the <? and they separated. I 

 found this 2 afterwards refused any other S that approached her. 



An interesting observation was made on a branch nest of F. rufa 

 in the Black Wood at Eannoch on June 12th. Two nests were found to 

 be in connection 128 yards apart, one a large mound about 72 in. across 

 by 54 in. in height a few yards below the path, and the other a small 

 hillock about the same distance from the path on the other side of it. 

 The ants were going backwards and forwards along the path to the 

 two nests. P'ood was being carried to the large nest, but the ants 

 were carrying their larvae from the large nest to the smaller one. A 

 dealated 2 was trying to get to the smaller nest ; though often stopped 

 by the ^ s she persisted, and gradually won her way to it. Winged 2 s 

 were upon the larger nest. 



At Nethy Bridge nearly all the rufa nests examined contained 

 pseudogynes. In one very large nest a number of pseudogyne callows 

 were present, and naked pupfe, of which there were numbers, appeared 

 all to be pseudogynes. There were very few myrmecophiles in the nests 

 and it was evidently too late to find the Atoueles,^^ the cause of all 

 these pseudogynes. 



Formica rufa, L. var. alpina, Santschi in litt. — On June 11th I 

 found at Rannoch, on the edge of a moor, a small mound made of 



12 See J5n(. Rec, 1910, p. 82. 



13 Tram. Ent. Soc. LoncL, 1911, p. 176. 

 " Ent. Rec, 1908, p. 281. 



