20 



This nest was inside an empty beech-nut, the entrance being a 

 small round aperture, evidently the escape-hole of some insect. 

 The nut contained a deälated female, one worker, and two half- 

 grown larvae, and was clearly a case of successful founding by a 

 solitary female. 



Emery found that a female of L. recedens could bring up a 

 colony in a month and a half. He took a deälated female 

 at Bologna on July 2nd, 1904, and put her in a Fielde nest 

 without food. On July 8th there were two eggs, on the 14th 

 five ; on the 21st a large larva, a small larva, and two eggs (thus 

 some eggs had been devoured) ; on the 31st a pupa, a large 

 and a small larva, and one egg. The first worker appeared on 

 August 13th. He also took a flying female of L. tuherum breviceps, 

 who kept her wings and yet laid eggs and brought up larvœ, 

 one of which became a worker pupa. 



L. accrvorum is often found in the nests of other ants, 

 and does not seem to be molested, and is indeed hardly 

 noticed at all. 



Parren White records it in a gorse stump in the centre of 

 a nest of F. sanguínea at Shirley, and Rothney (1882) continually 

 found it with the same species in that locality. Hamm tells 

 us he found it in a nest of F. exsecta at Bovey Tracey in Devon. 

 Pool found winged males and females, as well as workers, in 

 a F. ruja nest at Enfield (igo6). Donisthorpe has constantly 

 found it with F. rufa at Weybridge, in 1902, and with rufa and 

 sanguínea at Nethy Bridge and Woking respectively. He has 

 found queens and workers of L. nylanderi with L. fuliginosus at 

 Oxshott and elsewhere, and we have recently found in the New 

 Forest many nests of L. affino-tuherum in close juxtaposition with 

 nests of Tetramorium ca-spitum. Colonies of each of the two 

 latter species were placed by Crawley in separate chambers 

 of a Janet nest, and when the cotton- wool closing the gallery of 

 communication was removed, there were at first a few skirmishes 

 between the Leptoihorax and Tetramorium workers. The Tetra- 

 morium then blocked the gallery with débris. We suggest that 

 the Leptoihorax find protection by nesting in or close to the nests 

 of larger species, and their females after the marriage-flight 

 may voluntarily seek the neighbourhood of larger ants to found 

 their colonies. Thus Donisthorpe found a deälated female of 



