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



the others they were received with barely noticeable signs of hostility and much 

 licking, and forthwith settled down on the cocoons as members of the colony 

 in good standing. At 7 p.m. two of the females were quarelling with each 

 other, while the others were quietly brooding over the cocoons. July 14. 

 During the morning there was perfect peace in the nest. At 12 M. four winged 

 females were introduced. They were slightly pulled but soon adopted. The 

 colony remained in the same peaceful condition till July 23 except that on 

 July 19 the winged females became very restless and ran about the light chamber 

 as if impatient to take their nuptial flight. At 2 p.m. July 23, ten more dealated 

 females were added, bringing the total number up to 21. These females 

 were adopted by the incerta without hesitation, but there was some bickering 

 between the females from 3 to 5.30 p.m. There was perfect peace, however, 

 on the following days from July 24 to 7 p.m. July 26, when the experiment was 

 closed. All the females employed in this experiment were sisters from the 

 same colony. 



In this case the incerta, of course, could have had no previous ex- 

 perience with consocians. Although the weather was very warm dur- 

 ing the first days of the experiment it occurred to me that the workers 

 might not have reached maturity in three or four days and that the in- 

 troduction of the females should have been postponed for at least 

 twice that period of time. On returning to Bronxville, N. Y., during 

 August I therefore repeated the experiment with this in mind. A 

 number of consocians females had been brought from Colebrook and 

 were introduced to incerta workers bred from cocoons taken from nests 

 at Bronxville in a locality where the typical difficilis is very rare and 

 its variety consocians is not known to occur. 



Experiment 10. Aug. 17, 6 p.m. an artificially dealated consocians female 

 (No. i) was placed in a nest with nine incerta workers, all of which had hatched 

 in isolation 6 to 8 days previously, and a number of worker cocoons. The 

 workers threatened the female with opened mandibles but did not seem cour- 

 ageous enough to attack her. She kept approaching and touching them with 

 her antennae. Aug. 21, the female contrived to escape from the nest during 

 the night. Another (No. 2) was introduced at 6 p.m. There were now 12 

 incerta workers, three having hatched since Aug. 17. She was seized by three 

 workers and pulled about. They also bent their gasters forward between 

 their legs and deluged her with formic acid. One worker dragged her to the 

 manger and tried to throw her into it. She freed herself but seemed to be lame. 

 She continued, however, to accost the workers with rapidly vibrating antennae 

 and without signs of fear or resentment. The workers were unrelenting in 

 their attacks. They seized the poor female with a jerking, almost vindictive 

 movement. She mounted the brood-pile and stood her ground while the work- 

 ers kept nibbling at her body and legs. Some of them hcked her from time to- 

 time. By 6.15, although she was still threatened by some of the workers, 

 most of them passed without tweaking her. Several of them were evidently 

 much interested in her. At 6.^0 she began to lick the heads and backs of the 



