1001.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 443 



frieuclly. The courtship or honeymoon was distinguished by 

 mutual devotion. The one was rarely beyond the touch of the 

 other, and the satisfaction of the two in tlieir companionship Avas 

 apparently equal. If the queen moved the king usually followed. 

 If the king failed in constancy of attention to her, the queen 

 approached and by a side stroke of her antenna made him aware 

 of herself. This queen was exceptional in retaining all her wings 

 until after she deposited her first two eggs, on the 15th of Novem- 

 ber, two months after swarming. She had laid twenty-eight eggs 

 before she lost the wings of one side, on December 7, and she laid 

 many more before her last wing fell off in January. 



From the time of first egg laying, the king and queen both 

 watched over the eggs, one of them remaining on guard when 

 the other went to the opposite side of the cell to eat. The king 

 watched over the eggs in the absence of the queen, but he never 

 lifted them nor carried them about as did the queen. 



On the death of the king, December 28, after more than a 

 hundred days of wedlock, as he lay prone on his back with out- 

 spread wings, the queen piled her twenty eggs upon him, and hung 

 over the body persistently. On ensuing days I separated the 

 body, the queen and the eggs, first by a distance of a half-inch, 

 then of an inch, then of two inches, then of three inches, and in 

 a few hours after each separation the queen had brought the body 

 and the eggs again together and stood with her head lowered over 

 them, her mouth usually near the king's mouth. On the fifth day 

 after his death, I moved his body to the opposite side of the cell, 

 and separated it from the eggs by an inti'icate route between the 

 sponges. The distracted queen at once set out iu search of her 

 treasures, and in her efforts during the next two days to bring the 

 body and the eggs together, she so scattered the eggs that, fearing 

 the loss of them, I took out the shriveled body, collected the eggs, 

 and left the queen alone with them in a cleaned cell. 



Two males, one the issue of a workers' egg, the other of a 

 queens' egg, were later on introduced separately into her cell, aud 

 were killed and dismembered by her. 



The queen continued to lay eggs, and the eggs at frequent inter- 

 vals produced larva?, but this queen was evidently unable to feed 

 her young larvce, and I had no workers of her own colony to 

 offer her. Up to the end of May, 1901, she continued to lay 



