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Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXIII, 



In any event, the development of the garden is in need of further elucida- 

 tion. According to my investigations, which need fuller confirmation, 

 the organic substratum is provided in the form of malaxated eggs, but per- 

 haps the soil, which is rich in vegetable mould, may itself contain nutrient 

 substances .... As soon as the first workers appear, the colony may be 

 regarded as established and the opening up of the burrow, the enlarging of 

 the first chamber, carrying in of leaves, etc., lead to the well-known condi- 

 tions of the adult colony. . . .The preceding description is hardly complete 

 without an answer to the question : Whence come the fungus germs for the 

 establishment of the new garden?" After searching the queen for fungus 

 spores concealed about her person, von Ihering made the important dis- 

 covery that "every Atta queen, on leaving the parental nest, carries in the 

 posterior portion of her oral chamber a loose pellet, .6 mm. in diameter, 

 consisting of hyphse of Roziies gongylophora, small fragments of bleached 

 i. €., chlorophylless leaves, and chitinous bristles. The last are undoubtedly 

 derived from the larvae undergoing ecdysis in the parental nest." Von 

 Ihering is of the opinion that the female keeps the pellet of hyphse, etc., 

 in her mouth till she has excavated her chamber and then spits it out where 

 it will serve to kindle the fungus garden of the new colony. 



The observations of Goeldi, (Forel 1905, Goeldi 1905 a and h) are little 

 more than a confirmation of those of von Ihering. He maintains that the 

 fungus is actually grown on some of the malaxated eggs of the Atta queen, 

 who would thus be sacrificing a part of her offspring as a culture medium 



for the fungus that goes 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 bringing in of the leaves 

 for the purpose of keeping up the fungus 

 culture . This has been accomplished very 

 recently by Jakob Huber (1905) 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 (Fig. 1, c) the day following the nuptial flight. It is 

 a little mass .5 mm. in diameter, white, yellowish or even black in color, and 



Fig. 1. Head of recently fertilized 

 queen of Atta sexdens longituainally bi- 

 sected. 



a. Mandible; &, labium retracted; 

 c, buccal pocket containing d, the pellet 

 of fungus hyphae carried from the paren- 

 tal nest; e, oesophagus; /.oral orifice. 

 (After J. Huber.) 



