34 



She was violently attacked and was found dead next day. It 

 seems unlikely that in nature a colony of fusca, or its races, 

 would be founded in any other way than by the normal, viz. 

 by one or more queens without workers. 



Genus Camponotus. 



A great many incipient colonies of species of Camponotus 

 have been observed and described. McCook in 1883 published 

 an account by E. Potts showing how females of the " Carpenter 

 Ant," C. fensylvanicus, can found colonies by themselves. 

 Wheeler says that in many localities in the northern States 

 it is hardly possible to tear a strip of bark from an old log 

 without finding one or more females of C. fensylvanicus, or 

 some of its allied varieties, each in her little cell brooding over 

 a few eggs, larvie, cocoons, or minim workers. They often take 

 possession of the deserted pupal cavities of a longicorn beetle. 

 These cavities are surrounded by a regular wall of wood-fibres 

 arranged like the twigs of a bird's nest. 



Blockmann, in 1885, took a number of females of C. ligni- 

 perdus near Heidelberg, and placed them in separate nests. 

 After an absence of three months he found there were workers 

 in all the nests. He mentions five different stages he found 

 incipient colonies in, in nature, from a female alone to a female 

 with eggs, larvae, pupae, and one or two workers. He also gives 

 a list of solitary females that he says he had found alone with 

 eggs, viz. F. fusca, sanguínea, L. niger and umbratus. Of these 

 sanguínea and umbratus appear to us to be very doubtful, and 

 Wheeler describes the former as " a possibly inaccurate and 

 certainly inadequate recorded observation." 



Forel, who at the time of the appearance of his book on the 

 ants of Switzerland, was sceptical as to the power of females to 

 bring up colonies unaided, himself eventually kept a female of 

 C. ligniperdus until there were eggs, larvae, and pupae. He 

 received from Emery in August 1901 a fertile female, which 

 had been found by the latter in a closed cell with a bunch of 

 eggs. Forel placed this female in a small nest with moist 

 earth, but no food. He noticed some eggs on February 2nd, 

 1902, but could not be sure whether they were new ones, or 



