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Hamm dug up no less than sixteen dcälated females of flavus, 

 with about twelve small workers, in the New Forest on April i6th, 

 1911. These females and workers were kept in captivity, and 

 though through neglect the workers died, the females have now 

 reared a quantity of larvae, which they tend and sort into groups 

 corresponding to their size, just as the workers of this species 

 do. No hostility has at any time been observed among the 

 females. 



On June 6th, igoy, Wheeler foimd two deälated females 

 near Sion in the valley of the Rhône, in a small earthen cavity 

 under a stone, with a single packet of eggs and young larvae. 

 He had already found, in August 1904, a colony consisting of 

 two deälated queens of L. brcvicornis with a few larvœ, cocoons, 

 and two callow workers. They were observed to assist callows 

 from their cocoons. 



Wasmann made a discovery in 1909 which indicates that, 

 though many females of flavus may start a colony together, 

 they eventually split up into groups of not more than two. 

 Certainly we know of no case where more than two females have 

 been found in one nest. He found under a stone in a small 

 cell, at Luxemburg in September, four females with eggs and a 

 dead mutilated body of a fifth. After the first larvic had hatched 

 the females split into two groups of two each. This species is 

 much less pugnacious than niger, and probably fighting among 

 the females is of much rarer occurrence. 



All the above are probably cases of females fiying from the 

 same nest and meeting later by accident, as flavas, though not so 

 hostile to ants from strange colonies as niger, yet objects to their 

 presence and drives them from its nests. 



On rare occasions workers of flavus may accept a strange 

 queen, or one of their own females, after fecundation ; thus on 

 August ist, 1896, Crawley took a deälated female after the 

 marriage-fiight and placed her with twenty workers from her 

 own nest. On the third she began to lay, and in due course a 

 flourishing colony resulted. 



Again, at the end of July 1897 he had a queenless colony of 



flavus in a Lubbock nest. A strange fertile female was then 



taken and put in a box with four workers from this nest. As 



they seemed friendly the box was turned on its side close to the 



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