igo6.] Wheeler, Relations of Ants to Plants. 415 



are especially adapted for catching ground-game] appears correct 

 for this species. In one specimen examined, a large nest of ants had 

 been established in three of the older and rather dry brown leaves, 

 just beneath the reddish green leaves that were actively catching 

 prey. "^ 



That these insects should actually inhabit the old leaves of a 

 plant whose fresh leaves are so admirably adapted to their destruction, 

 is a reflection on ant "intelligence," especially in view of the fact 

 that sonie other animals have learned to turn the insect-eating habits 

 of one of the species of Sarracenia to their own advantage. Meehan 

 (/. c.) cites an observer who has seen birds hanging about the pitchers 

 of 5. variolaris and even splitting them for the sake of feeding on the 

 entrapped insects, and Riley (/. c.) describes the larva of a moth which 

 feeds on the leaves of the same Sarracenia and a carrion fly whose 

 larvse actually develop in the macerating insects at the bottom 

 of the pitchers. The moth is Exyra semicrocea. "The egg is laid 

 within the tube and the young larva covers the smooth surface with 

 a fine gossamer-like web, generally closing up the mouth by webbing 

 the lips together. As it increases in size it frets the leaf within, feeding 

 on the parenchyma and leaving only the epidermis. The ochre- 

 colored excrement falls in pellets to the bottom of the tube, where 

 it gathers in a compact mass above the putrid remains of the insects 

 which have been captured before the closing of the mouth. The 

 transformations are undergone in a slight cocoon usually constructed 

 just above the inass of excrement. There are at least two broods of 

 the insect each year, the first larva appearing during the early part 

 of May, the second toward the end of June." ^ The development of 

 the fly {Sarcophaga sarracenice) is thus described by Riley: "The 

 mother fly drops her living larvae within the tube to the number of 



' On August 20, while the manuscript of this article was being copied for the printer, Miss Delia 

 Marble had the kindness to send me several fine specimens of Sarracenia purpurea from a bog near 

 Bedford, New York. The pitchers contained no specimens of Cremastogaster but instead species 

 of two other genera, namely, several dead workers of a variety of Formica jtisca near stibccnescens. 

 two dead females of Dolichoderus maricv, which does not nest in bogs, and in one of the old and 

 somewhat withered pitchers, a fine living colony of D. plagiatus pustulalus var. inornaius. a, rare 

 ant of which I had never before seen the nest. This colony contained numerous pupae and winged 

 females. A search through the insect remains in the pitchers on the same and other plants failed 

 to reveal any traces oi inornatiis workers. During September Mr. E. Daecke sent me from Toms 

 River, New Jersey, a small, partially dried pitcher of 5. purpurea in which he had found a living 

 colony of another ant, Tapinoma sessile. Can it be that these ants have learned to exploit the 

 Sarracenia without being entrapped? 



2 More recently Mr. F. M. Jones has published an interesting paper (Pitcher-Plant Insects, 

 Entom. News, XV, 1904. pp. 14-17, pis. iii. and iv.) on the moths that breed in the pitchers of 

 S. flava. He enumerates three species (Exyra ridingsii. semicrocea and rolandiana) . He also 

 finds that a solitary wasp (Isodontia philadel phica) builds its nest in the pitchers. 



