18 
heads and antenne in the air, as though waiting for something to 
happen. 
There is no indication that under normal conditions the kelep 
queen ever leaves the nest voluntarily for mating purposes. There 
seems to be no record of a queen of this family being captured 
outside the nest. Mating inside the nest has been reported in another 
member of the family Poneride.?| Normally wingless females are 
also known in some of the other genera, which proves that with them, 
at least, the power of flight has been lost by the females as well as 
by the workers. In some species of ants and of Poneride there is 
no very sharp line between the workers and the queen, all of the 
intervening stages being occasionally found. Kelep queens and 
workers are, however, quite distinct, so far as observed. The queens 
are two or three times as large as the workers and are of a darker and 
more reddish color. The workers occasionally lay eggs, but they are 
of a distinctly smaller size than those of the queen. They remain 
white instead of turning a deep gray or blackish, like those of the 
queen, and are apparently recognized as worthless, for they are at 
once fed to the larvee, a fact discovered by Mr. F. L. Lewton.? 
When there are no larve the keleps seem not to know what to do 
with these diminutive eggs, but continue to carry them around in 
their mandibles. In one small colony I have seen three worker 
keleps with eggs at the same time, which would seem to indicate 
either that they are laid in considerable numbers or that they are 
carried about for considerable periods. 
The wings of the female being useless, it might be expected that 
they would be bitten off as promptly as in the true ants, or even 
sooner, but this is not the case. It seems scarcely possible that the 
queen could bite them off herself, even if so inchned, and of such an 
instinct there is no indication. The wings seem to be worn for an 
indefinite period. Queens with one or both wings frayed to half 
their length or less are occasionally found. The wing stumps, also, 
are of irregular sizes. It seems not unlikely that the workers gnaw 
them away gradually as a part of the cleaning process. 
In Pachycondyla, as described by Professor Wheeler, and in NVeo- 
ponera, which occurs in the vicinity of Victoria, Tex., the queens 
a Wheeler, W. M., 1901, Biological Bulletin, 2 :49. 
6 The laying by workers of eggs of nearly normal size which also turn dark 
and seem likely to develop normally was reported from Victoria, Tex., by Mr. 
Argyle McLachlan, after the above was written. 
¢'The species of Neoponera, which commonly lives in the mesquite bushes 
about Victoria, has been identified by Doctor Ashmead as N. villosa Fab. It 
is not without interest with reference to the possibility of establishing the 
kelep in Texas that the distribution of Neoponera villosa extends from Texas 
to Brazil, 
