1910] Wheeler — Ants Infested with Laboulbenia 85 
the clypeus and gula are generally free, and this seems to be in- 
variably the case with the mandibles, antennal funiculi, palpi, 
labium, maxilla and eyes. In a very few specimens I have seen one 
or two of the little plants on the antennal scapes, but, as a rule, 
these organs are perfectly clean. 
Heavily infested workers were seen toiling at their excavations, 
constructing the craters of the nest and running about as nimbly as 
uninfested individuals, but the colonies, judging from their rather 
limited personnel and the reduced number and small size of the 
craters seemed to be decidedly less prosperous than those of the 
larger, uninfested form of the same variety on the sandy beach. I 
excavated a considerable number of the nests of the infested colo- 
nies but in only one instance did I find larve, and I failed to find 
any queens, but as larve were not seen in the uninfested colonies 
and as the old queens of all of our species of Lasius are very 
rarely seen in the nests, these negative observations have little 
significance. 
It is strange that this should be the first time in my rather ex- 
tensive experience in collecting ants, that I have happened on a 
locality in which the colonies of a species are infested with Laboul- 
beniacee, and it is even more surprising that previous observers 
have found only two ant-infesting species of these fungi, which are 
represented by so many much larger and more remarkable forms on 
other insects. At first sight ants would seem to be particularly 
favorable hosts for such parasites since these insects are in the 
habit of huddling together in masses in warm subterranean gal- 
leries, where the fungi might be supposed to develop luxuriantly 
and transmit their spores from ant to ant with great facility. 
Further consideration of the matter, however, leads to the con- 
clusion that other habits of the ants must, in all probability, tend to 
suppress or render impossible the development of the fungi, except 
under unusual conditions such as those in which I found the colo- 
nies of L. neoniger living at Ellisville. All ants devote a great deal 
of time and attention to cleaning their own integument and that of 
their nestmates. They are, indeed, forever combing and scraping 
the surfaces of their bodies with their tongues and strigils, so that 
fungi must find it difficult to gain a precarious foothold in their 
nests, to say nothing of an opportunity to proliferate. And even on 
