338 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton's Experiments 



at the moment to take notice of food ? or (an unlikely 

 supposition) were the eggs (one of which had been treated 

 as an obstructing pebble might have been) regarded as 

 of the mineral or vegetable kingdoms ? I returned to 

 the house and cut up a small piece of meat into scraps as 

 small as a P. dardanus egg, and twenty minutes later 

 returned to the ants. 



The meat scraps were becoming dry. I put one in the 

 track, and it was at first passed over, then seized and 

 thrown outside as the dardanus egg had been. A second 

 piece was treated in the same way. But a moist, freshly- 

 extracted egg of a smallish, dull-coloured giasshopper 

 was at once picked up and carried along, as was a freshly- 

 cut-off piece of meat four times the size of a dardanus egg. 

 But a similar piece of half the size was thrown outside ! 

 However, on my returning it, it was at first for a time 

 passed by, then an ant took it and kept with it in the 

 column. An egg of another species of grasshopper was 

 set on to by three or four ants, and it was some time 

 before one of them finally carried it along in the column. I 

 then crushed and put in together three eggs of A. acara. 

 They were picked up and carried along. To test what the 

 ants were prepared to rise to in the matter of unpleasant- 

 ness I next placed an adult Acraea terpsichore, L. (the only 

 Acraea I had with me), first killing it, three or four inches 

 from the column. It was quickly found, a mass of ants 

 covered it up, the wings were gradually taken off at the 

 base and the body brought into the column and carried 

 along. 



May 1st. — Again tried Dorylus — yesterday's column, as 

 active as previously. I put in in turn slightly developed, 

 unbroken eggs of Papilio dardayius, $ f. hippocoon, Papilio 

 demodocus and Pyrameis cardui (four or five of this). They 

 were in each case either completely ignored or merely 

 picked up and dropped outside. Eggs of A. acara and 

 A. aglaonice, put down two or three together, were com- 

 pletely and continuously neglected. I watched for quite 

 half an hour, occasionally moving the eggs back into the 

 run, but nothing other than what I have described occurred. 

 But an egg of Charaxes ethalion (new-laid, plain green and 

 not yet ringed) almost immediately found a carrier, and 

 was taken along to the next outpost in the direction in 

 which the main body was moving. 



Two eggs of hippocoon extracted from the body of their 



