1901.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELrillA. 429' 



Colonies captured and confined in my nests just before swarming 

 time, within a few days divided into as many groups as there were 

 queens, the queens disposing themselves as far apart as the limits 

 of the nest permitted. When a queen was then x-eraoved by me, 

 the workers at once carried the young and settled down by another 

 queen. 



A wingless queen, after wandering for some days alone in a 

 Lubbock nest, cleared an irregularly oval space about three centi- 

 meters long and two centimeters wide, building a smooth solid wall 

 with the particles of earth that she removed from her floor. The 

 wall was compact and vertical, and for more than half the circum- 

 ference of the structure extended a distance of five millimeters 

 from the floor to the glass roof. She worked industriously for 

 several days on this structure and then laid an egg, which she 

 lifted and carried between her mandibles whenever light was 

 admitted to her dwelling. The day after the laying of the first 

 egg, a visitor lifted the glass roof of the nest and spoiled her 

 work. I then marked her, using a fine camel' s-hair brush and 

 dotting the top of her abdomen with a fleck of quickly drying 

 varnish into which water colors had been rubbed, and I then re- 

 turned her to her own colony, from which she had been absent 

 three weeks. The first worker that she there met stood head to 

 head with her for some minutes, while the two tapped each other 

 with antennte and the v/orker regurgitated food to the queen. 

 Other ants greeted her with the same ordinary signs of satisfaction. 

 Xine queens taken on their emergence from the nest at swarming 

 in September and placed in Petri cells, each \vith an alien king, 

 retained their wings from two to three months, and only one of 

 them laid eggs before shedding her wings. One of my queens shed 

 her wings the day she was captured, and another retained hers 

 nearly four months. One laid her first egg twenty-seven days 

 after swarming in September, and one laid no eggs until January, 

 one hundred and six days after swarming. None of the score of 

 queens that I have isolated at their swarming with alien kings has 

 failed sooner or later to lay eggs. 



The eggs are deposited one at a time, without regularity in the 

 intervals. Only once have I known so many as six to be deposited 

 in a single day, one or two a day being the ordinary number. If 

 the queen is agitated or troubled she ceases from egg-laying, some- 



