360 Mr. G. A. J. Rothney's noUs 



signs of hostility, were too feeble to make any serious 

 attack. 



I repeated this experiment many times, varying the 

 intervals of introducing friends and strangers from a 

 few days up to the three weeks, but always with the 

 same result. I then altered the conditions somewhat, 

 and on June 10th cut a fine populous nest from a tree 

 and placed it on the trunk of one a few hundred yards 

 distant, inhabited by another colony. The ants from 

 my nest immediately took possession of the fork where 

 I had placed the nest, overpowering the few ants that 

 happened to be about ; but others came streaming down 

 to repel the invaders. My nest continued to pour 

 forth its swarms, and soon the trunk was covered with 

 masses of struggling yellow ants. It was, as far as I 

 could judge, a drawn battle. 



I then withdrew my nest, and hung it up to the trunk 

 of a tree frequented by Pseudomyrma rufo-nigra. Out 

 sallied the yellow ants, and rufo-nigra in alarm made off, 

 and in doing so showed a great amount of discretion ; 

 they had not the numbers to make a stand-up fight, but 

 their superior individual strength enabled the few that 

 were attacked to deal out some rapid and effective strokes 

 with mandibles and sting, to wrench themselves clear 

 and escape without injury. I then took the nest of 

 smaragdina back to the tree from which I cut it, and the 

 ants were at once received with every sign of pleasure ; 

 and, although hundreds must have been left behind on 

 the two trees, the nest appeared to be as populous 

 as ever. 



On another occasion I hung a nest of smaragdina to a 

 small Palmyra palm in my compound, which was occu- 

 pied by a strong nest of the yellow wasp, Polistes 

 hebrceus, but the ants and wasps did not come into 

 contact in any way, although they were only separated 

 about two feet. In this my observations did not agree 

 with the late Mr. Chas. Home's, who found that 

 Qllcoiilu)lla had a great antipathy to Polistes ; and in his 

 paper on liymenoptera from the North-west Provinces 

 gives a very interesting account of the attacks of the 

 yellow ant on the yellow wasj) ; but in my case the ants 

 were not quite under natural conditions, which may 

 easily account for their leaving the wasps alone. And P 

 was never able to find G^cophylla and Polistes inhabiting 



