xliv 



group establishes its nest in the interior of termitaries, living in 

 amicable relations with a species of Termites. 



A new species of Brazilian Trigona, whereof the queen, males 

 and workers have been described by Herr Hermann Miiller under 

 the vernacular name of T. cagafogo* ('Nature,' Nos. 193 and 237), 

 is " supposed " to imitate some of the Formicid^e, in milking the 

 larvae of certain Membracidne belonging to the Homopterous 

 genus Potnia of Stal, to which, in the absence of Aphides, the 

 ants of Brazil have recourse for the purpose of imbibing the 

 saccharine fluid, which the former also emit.t 



Sir John Lubbock has communicated to the Linnean Society, 

 on two occasions during the past year, the results of some highly 

 interesting observations made by him " On the Habits of Bees, 

 Wasps and Ants," his experiments having for their object to test 

 the extent to which the social Hymenoptera ma}^ be enabled to 

 communicate with each other. The deductions to be drawn from 

 these experiments would seem to be of a character to dissipate 

 much of the fantasy with which this subject has been invested 

 by those writers who have attributed to such communities the 

 employment of ''some kind of language" as a medium of inter- 

 communication. But in ascribing such faculties to these 

 co-operating colonies, it may be conceived that (speaking figura- 

 tively) more was never intended to be implied than the habitual 

 employment of certain symbols for intelligible purposes ; | and 

 that none of these writers ever intended to assume that any 

 of these interesting races could exercise the power of describing 

 localities or of communicating facts, without acting as pioneers 

 to their companions, and (as Huber says) hringing others to such 

 localities. § 



As an instance of this nature, I ma}^ mention a circumstance in 

 which similar evidences were elicited. A Polistes nest having 

 been brought to me full of feeding larvae, with a single specimen 

 of the imago brood, I placed this nest, together with its solitary 

 occupant, outside a window, but within the exterior Venetian 

 blinds corresponding with those of three floors of several con- 



* Quoted by Spis and Martins j vide St. Fargeau, Hym. i. 413. 



+ Westwood, Mod. Classif. of lus., vol. ii. pp. 234= and 434. 



J Kirby and Spence, Introd. to Eutom., vol. ii., p. 27 (5th Edit.). 



(P. Huber), Ibid., p. 30. 



§ Journal of Linn. Soc, No. 58, Nov. 1874, p. 112. ' 



