35 



those that had come with the ant. Later there was one pupa, 

 and by the end of the month three were present. Finally two 

 workers reached maturit\', but the female ceased to look after 

 her offspring, and the incipient colony perished. He suggests 

 three means by which the female was kept alive and fed the 

 larvse: (i) by the secretions of her own body, (2) by devouring 

 some of her eggs, (3) by drinking the water in the moist earth, 

 which might contain in solution some nutritive substances. 



Crawley kept for some years a female of C. ligniperdus 

 which brought up workers, though she was assisted by workers 

 to a certain extent. The female was found deälated after 

 the marriage-flight at Ouchy, Switzerland, on June 13th, 1905. 

 She was first placed in a box with three workers from a nest 

 near by. The workers were not hostile, but seemed alarmed 

 and avoided the female. Three others from another nest were 

 then tried; they attacked her, and so were removed. This seems 

 to show that the adoption of a strange queen is unlikely. She 

 was then placed in a Lubbock nest with a few half-grown larvse 

 from the nest of the hostile workers, which she fed until they 

 pupated, at the end of June. The first worker emerged on July 

 28th, in England ; she laid eggs and brought up a fair number of 

 workers during 1906 and 1907. The nest contained twenty to 

 thirty workers when it was eventually killed by the rays of the 

 sun in the summer of 1907. 



An experiment by Schmitz, in 191 1, shows that females of 

 C. ligniperdus that have founded a colony together end by fight- 

 ing until only one female remains. This, as with L. niger, only 

 takes place when a fair number of workers have been reared. 

 He found at Schönau in Taunus, during July and August, seven 

 young Camponotus colonies, ranging from a solitary female in 

 a hole, without any young, through all stages up to a female 

 and a dozen workers with brood. Two of these incipient colonies 

 were under the same stone, though in separate chambers, and 

 this suggested to him the ])ossibility of two or more females 

 joining forces to bring u]) their families. Accordingly he took 

 the two females and a few larvie, and put them in a glass nest 

 on July 25th. They were perfectly friendl\-, and laid eggs. 

 On August ist ten workers appeared. Two da\'s later, when 

 there were about twentv workers, the two females fought fiercely, 



