231 



1 have just said that the ravages of these ants seem to me very un- 

 important, and I will show afterwards in what they consist. However, 

 r have read in various authors, among others in the encyclopedia com- 

 I)iled by Dr. Chenu, this note : 



The domestic aut of Scbenk, a very small species which has of late made great 

 devastation iu England, in the houses of parts of London and Brighton, where it has 

 settled and lays waste everything within its reach. 



In the remarkable work of Mr. Edm. Andre, the Species of Hymen- 

 optera of Europe and Algeria, the Monomorium pharaonis is indicated 

 as being a native of Algeria, Palestine, and the tropical and sub-trop- 

 ical regions of the whole world. The following is there given, together 

 with a description of the three kinds or sexes. 



This cosmopolitan species, which lives oftenest in houses in the walls or cracks, 

 has acclimated itself in many large cities, such as Paris, Lyons, London, Copenhagen, 

 Hamburg, etc. It causes often great damage by boring holes in furniture to establish 

 its galleries, and by infesting eatables. 



Last year on quitting Metz, where I was born and which I did not 

 wish to leave, I came to Reims, and in the apartments which I occupied 

 on Talleyrand street I found iu a cupboard, with a quantity of neuters 

 of Monomorium, a half dozen females, of which two had wings, and 

 three males. Happy in discovering the two sexes, which I did not 

 possess, I resolved to search for other specimens, and, if possible, to 

 tiud the nest itself. 



During the winter I saw a few neuters crawling through the dining- 

 room, but nothing revealed to me the presence of any nest, and, until 

 midsummer, although the neuters became more numerous, not a single 

 sexual individual came under my observation. Where, then, was the 

 nest to be found? The sideboards iu the dining-room and a new cup- 

 board were particularly frequented by neuter ants, allured by the victuals 

 which were customarily shut up there; but after having several times 

 explored all the corners of these places it became evident that the nest 

 was not to be found there. Ants crawled in numbers upon the floor, 

 where they profited by the falling crumbs from the table ; they were 

 going besides in large numbers towards a side of the room where the 

 floor was looselj joined ; it was in these clefts of the floor that they 

 disappeared, only to return again to take their food. My neighbor has 

 his pastry oven on that side, and he knows this little ant very well, 

 with its dainty taste for sweetmeats as well as meat. To destroy them 

 he places on the ground, from time to time, ham bones, and the next 

 day he finds them covered with ants, which he destroys by throwing 

 the whole into the fire. 



The neighborhood of a pastry shop afl^brds me the advantage of being 

 visited by Blatta {KakerlaJc orientalis), also Blatta germanica, that I 

 kill without mercy ; for when I used to allow one to stay on the floor 

 the ants would immediately attack it, and, one hour after, I would see it 

 covered with a hundred ants feeding on the juices contained iu its body, 

 which they left whole on the floor. 



