1« 



following year. One of the males lived till April and th& 

 other till the middle of May. The first worker emerged on 

 July 22nd, 1877. 



Thus more than eleven months had elapsed between the 

 fertilisation of the females and the appearance of the first workers, 

 but it must be remembered that the females had been fed during 

 this period. It is quite possible that this hardy female ant 

 may, in nature, obtain food while bringing up her first brood. 



FoREL, in June 1873, found an isolated fertile female of 

 M. scahrinodis in a neat spherical cell of earth under a stone, 

 with eggs and very small larvae. At this time, Forel, in accord- 

 ance with the opinion of Ebrard, was inclined to doubt the 

 capacity of isolated females to found colonies, as up to then 

 no females had been found with large larvœ or pupae, but only 

 with eggs and small larvae. 



At Scarborough, in September 1893, Crawley took a single 

 deälated female of M. ruginodis after the marriage-flight, and 

 put her in a small Lubbock nest. After a few weeks she made 

 a small chamber, and enclosed herself completely inside it, 

 but when two months had elapsed, she died without having 

 laid any eggs. Again, on April 21st, 1896, he found a deälated 

 female of M. scahrinodis wandering on a path near Oxford. 

 As this species swarms in the late summer, this female must 

 have spent the winter somewhere and have come out during 

 the first warm days of spring to find a suitable spot for her nest. 

 She built a small chamber in the earth in a Lubbock nest, and 

 laid four eggs on April 25th, which she tended. Next day there 

 were seven eggs, but a few days later she devoured two. By 

 May i6th there were eighteen eggs, but from this date the nest 

 was neglected, and the female died in June. 



Crawley has found colonies of M. ruginodis, lœvinodis, and 

 scahrinodis invariably hostile to strange fertile females of the 

 same species, even in cases where the colonies possessed no 

 queens of their own, and strange workers were always killed. 

 In May 1909 he introduced a fertile lœvinodis female to a strange 

 nest of the same species, and she was at once dragged out and 

 abandoned. On being put in a second time, she was again 

 removed, and the workers attempted to sting her. 



On the other hand, under certain conditions strange colonies 



