326 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXI, 



have been studied by the leading myrmecologists, Mayr, Emery, and 

 Forel. Mayr's account, ^ which is the earliest, may be quoted in full: 



"This beautiful species probably establishes its colonies in hollow 

 trees, since I have been unable hitherto, notwithstanding many 

 attempts, to find its nests. It wanders about in processions ascending 

 trees, where it could go only for the purpose of attending plant-lice. 

 During the past three years I have repeatedly visited a couple of 

 silver poplars standing close together and have always found this ant 

 moving in a procession from one tree to the other, but I have been 

 unable to discover either the nests or the winged sexes. The pro- 

 cessions are often very long and are permanently maintained through- 

 out the whole summer, since the workers go back and forth. Such a 

 procession is to be seen, for example, in the Prater in Vienna, ex- 

 tending between four trees and measuring 180 feet in length. This 

 procession also sends out to one side another which measures 7 2 feet 

 in length and leads to two other trees." 



Emery gives a more extensive account of this ant which he found 

 to be common in Italy where it is associated almost exclusively with 

 oak trees. 2 Between these it forms processions or files sometimes 

 240 feet in length. "This ant seems neither to build nor to excavate 

 its nests, but uses the cavities and galleries dug in the wood or under 

 the bark by the larvae of stag-beetles (Lucanus), longicorns (Cerambyx) , 

 or other large wood-eating beetles. No other tree presents such com- 

 modious and convenient cavities of this description as the oak. . . . 

 This ant's mode of life is largely external. It patrols great surfaces; 

 nearly every crevice in the bark of the trees which it inhabits being 

 used by a file of ascending and descending workers. During the 

 hottest hours of the summer days they withdraw into their cavities, 

 but at other times nearly all the individuals keep running about out- 

 side of the nest." Emery maintains that they do not attend aphides 

 in order to collect their sweet ejecta, but carry these insects away as 

 food. " L'i'owe/Oj^wM is preeminently a predatory ant and lives almost 

 exclusively on animal food. ... It runs about on the bark of 

 the trees awaiting the coming of other insects, which it seizes. It 

 institutes veritable battues for larger game. . . . While on these 

 hunting expeditions the Liom,etopum- workers always rely on the 

 same method of quickly overwhelming their prey from all sides and 

 holding it fast. They also behave in the same manner in their con- 

 flicts with other ants." Besides the files, which connect the various 



^ Formicina Austriaca. Verhandl. k. k. zool. bot. Gesell. Wien, V, 1855, p. 319. 

 '^ Zur Biologic der Ameisen. Biol. Centralblatt, 1891, pp. 165-180. 



