660 Mr. W. C. Crawley on 
no possibility of te in this case, and the most care- 
ful records have been kept. This colony had no brood of 
any kind, so to occupy the numerous 9s I gave them some 
niger eggs. All these eggs became larvae before Novem- 
ber 1908, and no eggs were laid by the wmbratus queen or 
the niger Gs during that year. By the end of April 1909 
most of these nzger larvae were more than half-grown, and 
a few nearly ready to pupate, and on May 4th there were 
seven eggs in the nest. I did not see them laid, so was 
not certain whether they were workers’ or the queen’s eggs. 
On May 7th, however, the abdomen of the queen was 
considerably swollen, and I observed her in the act of 
laying. From this time till late in June | repeatedly saw 
her depositing eggs, though I never succeeded in seeing a 
niger & doing so. The first nager larva pupated on May 
12th, and on the 30th there were over fifty pupae. The 
queen was often seen to lick the eggs herself, but none 
hatched till June 20th, when I observed a number of very 
small larvae. This was about six weeks after the first 
eggs were laid. 
On June 25th there was a fair number of these small 
larvae side by side with the eggs. From July 11th till 
August 9th, 1909, the nest was under the care of Mr. A. H. 
Hamm, of the Oxford University Museum, who took 
special care that no eggs, larvae or pupae of any species 
were introduced into the nest. On August 9th, when I 
took back the nest, the queen had apparently ceased to 
lay, as her abdomen was its normal size; and there were 
numbers of larvae of all sizes, a few changing into pupae, 
and several newly-emerged niger 3s. I observed numbers 
of niger 9s hatch daily till August 24th, by which time 
there could have been very few, if any, of the last year’s 
neger larvae which had not already pupated, as all the 
remaining larvae in the nest weresmall. From August 24th 
till October 3rd, 1909, during my absence in America, Mr. 
Hamm again most kindly took charge of the nest, and 
assures me that no young of any species of ant was put 
into the nest. 
The nest contained, on my return, many half- and three- 
quarter-grown larvae (in which condition they passed the 
winter), a few pupae, and a large quantity of eggs, much 
larger than had been in the nest on August 24th. As the 
queen had to all appearance ceased laying by that date, 
many of these eggs may have been laid by the niger 9s. 
