THE FOUNDING OF COLONIES BY ATTA SEXDENS. 365 



first worker, the commencement of an exit tunnel, the month of which 

 was soon surrounded with a c^uite high crater. (Fig. 25.) With still 

 another colony, founded like the former one on March 12, the same 

 conditions were noted May 5. In both of these cases pieces were 

 cut from rose leaves that had been supplied and were carried down 

 into the nest. 



Here we pass from the transitional period into the definite period 

 of the construction of the fungus garden. I had not, up to this tune, 

 actually seen any cases of exit tunnels under natural conditions; the 

 before-mentioned experiments making it evident that seven weeks 

 after the founding of the colony its young workers are in condition 

 to open up connection with the outer world and to take up the task of 

 leaf cutting. 



For the purpose of accurately studying the definite period of 

 fungus garden construction, a queen ant and thirty young workers, 

 together with a transitional fungus garden, were placed in a glass 

 case without any soil, and a rose leaf was then introduced. The date 

 was April 30. Three hours after this I found the leaf cut up 

 and the minute, irregulai' fragments worked together into small 

 masses and placed at various points around the border of the fungiis 

 garden. During the afternoon of the same day scraps of the fungus 

 mycelium selected from other places, particularly from the underside 

 of the fungus garden, were planted on these leaf fragments. During 

 succeeding days, the circumference of the garden was visibly raised 

 by means of repeated additions of new leaf fragments, and particles 

 of mycelium planted upon them, so that the 3'Oung brood came to be, 

 after a while, in a sort of room, which later (May 4) had been almost 

 completely roofed over. Alongside of this the first foundations of 

 adjoining apartments were constructed, one of which served the pur- 

 pose of a storeroom for the more or less completely chopped up and 

 interwoven leaf particles. During the process of leaf cutting, per- 

 formed, as would be expected, only by the larger individuals, and 

 the building up of the definite fungus garden, in which the smallest 

 workers share, the process of manuring seems to be no longer carried 

 on — at least I have not been able to observe it. The queen appears 

 to look with very little favor upon this new method of fungus culture. 

 Often standing immovable, and as if sulking, she turns sideways to 

 the garden and goes to it only for the purpose of inspecting the work, 

 hastily licking the fungus, laying her eggs, or feeding the larvse with 

 them, and even in these matters the workers frequently replace her, 

 snatching the eggs from her mandibles and even taking them from 

 the abdomen. There now sets in for the queen a period of gradual 

 retrogression, which terminates finally in debasing this painstaking 

 and industrious mother into a mere egg-laying machine. The domi- 



