VII moe e LING QUEENS ap ie 
not altogether free from slugs, centipedes, etc., nor 
did they keep perfectly dry, so I still found it 
necessary to replace them with dry ones, and to 
clear the tunnels, every tenth day or so; but this 
was because the weather was showery, for in July, 
when the ground got dry and hard, the nests 
remained dry and the vermin left them. 
I found that the chief cause of the nests getting 
wet was contact with the damp earth. By taking 
care that they did not touch the sides of the cavity, 
and by placing discs of tin-plate under them, I was 
able to keep them much drier. 
As slugs and centipedes were often found and 
killed in the tunnel when I cleared it, it was evident 
that they got into the nest-cavity by passing through 
the tunnel; I think, however, that some of them 
travelled through the soil near the surface. The 
slugs wetted the nests by crawling over them, 
and so helped to draw moisture into them. 
Although queens were less plentiful than usual, 
owing to the previous unfavourable season, and 
although fourteen out of the seventy nests laid down 
were rendered useless because they were occupied 
by ants or washed out by floods caused by thunder- 
storms, twenty-one’ of them were occupied by queens, 
and in nine* the larve span their cocoons. These 
results showed that the queens much preferred my 
new wood-covered domiciles to the sod-and-tile 
covered kind. 
1 13 lapidarius, 3 latretllellus, 1 terrestris, 1 ruderatus, 1 hortorum, 1 
sylvarum, and 1 species unknown. 
2 5 lapidarius, 2 latretllellus, 1 hortorum, and 1 sylvarum. 
