1906.] Wheeler, Habits of the Tent-building Ant. 3 



article, which was translated and republished in ' Psyche ' twenty 

 years later, 1 is here quoted in full: 



"On a horizontal twig of a juniper (/. virginiana), about five feet 

 from the ground, I observed a colony of a species of Lachnus. A 

 small reddish ant with a brown abdomen was diligently working at 

 a tube-shaped structure of soft* grayish brown, felt-like material, 

 enclosing the twig in a kind of sheath. The material probably con- 

 sisted of short fibers of liber closely packed together; it had a pitchy 

 smell, burnt well, the smoke having the same smell, but stronger. 

 The structure was about an inch long and one third of an inch in 

 diameter. 



"The second case observed by me was near the Berkeley Springs, 

 in Virginia. A black ant had built a globular structure of a sandy 

 material, of about an inch and a half in diameter, around the stem of 

 an Asclepias , 

 which was close- 

 ly packed with 

 aphides. Al- 

 though the sand 

 was sufficiently 

 mixed with clay 

 to have the 

 necessary con- 

 sistence, and 



although several Fig. 2. Cremastogaster lineolata Say. Worker with the gaster turned up 



leafstalks served -"^ '^■'•-'^'* ^"'"'°^>y- 



as supports, the structure was so brittle that I did not succeed in 



bringing it home. " 



It is clear from Osten Sacken's description that the two aphis- 

 tents which he observed were made of very different materials, one 

 being of felted vegetable detritus, the other of sand and clay. As all 

 the tents described by subsequent writers consist of one or the other 

 of these two substances they may be distinguished as the carton and 

 earthen types, respectively. In the original German paper Osten 

 Sacken ascribes the felted or carton nest to a Formica, but it is 

 very probable that both of the tents were constructed by forms of C. 

 lineolata, for the term Formica need not be construed in the restricted 

 modern sense ; the fact that it was omitted in the translation may be 

 taken to indicate that Osten Sacken may have employed it in a 

 general sense as synonymous with the word 'ant.' 



' Ants and Aphides. Psyche, Vol. Ill, No. 97, May 1882, p. 342. 



