44 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol, XXII, 



on some of the malaxated eggs of the Atta queen, who would thus be sac- 

 rificing a part of her offspring as a culture medium for the fungus that i 

 to nourish both herself and her workers in their larval and adult stages. 



None of these investigators succeeded in rearing an Atta colony from 

 its very inception till the hatching of the firstling workers and the bring- 

 ing in of the leaves for the purpose of keeping up the fungus culture. 

 This has been accomplished very recently by Jakob Huber, who, be- 

 sides correcting a few errors in the work of his predecessors, has added 

 a number of new and important observations. His paper, from which 

 the following abstract is taken, also contains several interesting figures 

 from photographs of the Atta female, her progeny, and fungus garden. 



The female expels the pellet from her buccal pocket the day fol- 

 lowing the nuptial flight. It is a little mass .5 mm. in diameter, white, 

 yellowish, or even black in color, and consists of fungus hyphae im- 

 bedded in the substances collected from the ant's body by means of 

 the strigils on her fore feet and thence deposited in her mouth. By the 

 third day 6 to 10 eggs are laid. At this time also the pellet begins to 

 send out hyphae in all directions. The female separates the pellet into 

 two masses on this or the following day. For the next 10 to 12 days 

 she lays about 10 eggs daily, while the fungus flocculi grow larger and 

 more numerous. At first the eggs and flocculi are kept separate, 

 but they are soon brought together and at least a part of the eggs 

 are placed on or among the flocculi. Eight or ten days later the 

 flocculi have become so numerous that they form when brought 

 together a round or elliptical disc about i cm. in diameter. This 

 disc is converted into a dish-like mass with a central depres- 

 sion in which the eggs and larvae are henceforth kept. The first 

 larvae appear about 14 to 16 days after the Atta female has com- 

 pleted her burrow, and the first pupae appear about a month after 

 the inception of the colony. By this time the fungus garden has a 

 diameter of about 2 cm. There are no "kohlrabi" corpuscles in the 

 earlier stages, and when first seen they are at the periphery of the disc. A 

 week later the pupae begin to turn brown and in a few days the first 

 workers hatch. Hence the time required for the establishment of a 

 colony under the most favorable conditions is about 40 days. After 

 this rapid survey of the matter, Huber asks the important question: 

 How does the Atta female manage to keep the fungus alive? Ob- 

 viously the small amount of substance in the original pellet must be 

 soon exhausted and the growing hyphce must be supplied with nu- 

 triment from some other source. His interesting answer to this ques- 

 tion may be given in his own words: 



