OBSERVATIONS OX THE MYRMECOPHILOUS COLEOPTERA. 87 



5. Myrmica rubra, L. (the Red Ant), with which we 

 have probably hitherto confounded one or more of 

 the allied species. 



We have not, up to the present time, been able to find a 

 colony of Formica cunicularia, Latr. (the Mining Ant). 

 Mr. F. Smith, in his British Museum " Catalogue of British 

 Aculeate Hymenoptera" (1851), gives Highgate as a loca- 

 lity for this species; but the spot on which the nest was 

 situate, once so wild and lovely, is now occupied by a square 

 mass of bricks and mortar, ycleped " an eligible family 

 residence," beneath which lies the dust of the last member 

 of that once busy, happy throng. Those who have an op- 

 portunity of examining the nests of this species, which gene- 

 rally constructs its habitation in old decaying trees, especially 

 oaks, will probably find a recompense for their trouble in 

 the discovery of Euryusa slnuata, at present unknown as 

 British. 



Formica rufa, as its popular appellation denotes, fre- 

 quents woods, where it excavates numerous capacious cells in 

 the earth, raising over them a superstructure in the form of 

 a conical hillock, consisting of fragments of twigs, leaves, 

 pebbles, in fact of any dry portable object falling within its 

 reach. The purport of this mound appears to be to shelter 

 the nest itself from cold and more especially from wet. These 

 hillocks in the course of years gradually attain formidable 

 dimensions. On the first warm days in March, sometimes 

 at the end of February, the wood ant awakens from its long 

 winter's sleep and may be seen basking in clusters on the 

 hillocks ; this is the period for commencing ants-nest opera- 

 tions. 



Having conveyed a supply of large rough stones — smooth 

 ones will not do— or failing these, bricks, to the wood which 

 is to be the scene of action, and where, I presume, are found 



