22 



seek out such stones, in order to have a supply of food ready to 

 hand while they are bringing up their young. 



Among the Attii, the fungus-growing ants of tropical and 

 sub-tropical America, we find the females very elaborately 

 equipped for the purpose of rearing their families. The females 

 are of enormous size compared with their workers, and are able 

 to subsist for a long time without nourishment. As shown by 

 VON I HERING, GÖLDi, Sampaio, and S. HuBER, the female on 

 her marriage-flight carries away in her infra-buccal cavity a 

 small pellet consisting of the hyphae of the fungus which forms 

 the sole food of the ants. This pellet is formed from the refuse 

 of the ant's last meal, scraped from her mouth and body by 

 her strigils. S. Huber in 1905 traced the development of a 

 colony of A. sexdens from the time a young female makes her 

 cell in the earth up to the appearance of the first workers. 



The female, after making her cell, expels the pellet from her 

 infra-buccal cavity, and in a few days the hyphae begin to sprout. 

 She lays eggs a few days after her flight, and averages ten eggs 

 daily. Most of the eggs are used by the ant for food, and not 

 as manure for the small fungus-garden, as formerly supposed. 

 The fungus is manured by means of the ant's own excrement. 

 She breaks ofí a small piece of the fungus from time to time, 

 holds it against the tip of her abdomen, drenches it with liquid 

 excrement, and replaces it on the garden-patch. Thus the whole 

 patch is gradually manured. The fungus itself is not used for 

 food until the appearance of the workers, which takes place 

 about six weeks from the time the female is established in 

 her cell. 



Huber also states that fertile females of A . sexdens are readily 

 adopted by strange workers of the same species. Such adoptions 

 may partly account for the enormous size attained by some 

 colonies. 



Subfamily Dolichoderinae. 



Emery, in 1904, exhibited at the International Congress 

 of Zoology at Berne a nest of Dolichoderus attelahoides from 

 Brazil. It was built of carton on a leaf and contained a single 

 female. 



