28 
able lo satisfy ourselves that this is true of all, or even of most, of the 
winter communities of this species. A careful search and exploration 
of all the tunnels and chambers of large nests have often failed to bring 
to light a single queen. Sometimes, however, two or more queens may 
be seen living contentedly in the same worker family, performing their 
proper function of laying eggs for the increase of the colony. Besides 
these large composite and evidently well-established communities, one 
may often find single females in the ground, sometimes wholly alone, 
and sometimes with a few of their own eggs, a few larvae, and a small 
number of workers which are mainly undersized, but with no root-lice 
in possession and no companion mites. Late in fall these scattered 
solitary females may have nothing with them in their pocketlike under- 
ground cells except a small cluster of their own eggs. These minor 
groups with a single female in charge, are the beginnings of a new 
family, and do not often reach more than a score or so of individuals 
by the end of the first year. The larger compound groups are older 
families, how old in any given case we have no present means of 
knowing. 
Beginning of a New Colony 
Beginning now with a single female, which came out from an 
established colony as a winged ant but later broke off her own wings, 
burrowed in the earth, and began to lay eggs for another generation, 
we will follow the history of the new enterprise thru the first year, 
so far as our notes and observations enable us to go. Females and 
males hatching from pupae as winged ants in the underground nests 
from June to October, swarm out of their burrows as if by common 
consent in August or September. Such an occurrence was noticed by 
Mr. H. Carman, at Urbana, at 5 p. m. September 14, 1885. Males 
and females came rapidly up from their burrows under ground and, 
climbing the nearest blades of grass, took flight one by one, in various 
directions, the workers in the meantime running rapidly about in a 
state of great excitement. The males perish before winter, and the 
scattered females go into the ground, each making for herself an oval 
or spherical cavity, the beginning of a new family home. Some of 
these buried females begin to lay eggs in summer and fall — August 15 
to November 10, as we have seen them — but others live there alone 
until spring, depositing their first eggs, according to our observations, 
from the first to the middle of May, and continuing to lay additional 
eggs, a few at a time, until September. The minute, maggotlike, foot- 
less, and helpless larvae begin to hatch from these eggs in June, and 
this hatching process may continue until October. The first larva: to 
appear are fed by the female from the contents of her own stomach, 
which, as she is said to take no food during this period, are believed to 
come from the nutriment stored up in her own body.* We have found 
•Charles Janet has lately shown that the muscles of the wings of the female, used only 
for a few hours during her whole life, break down within her body into a food supply avail- 
able for the production of her eggs and the nourishment of her young. Anatomie du Corse- 
let et Histolyse des Muscles Vibrateurs, apres le Vol Nuptial chez la Reine de la Fourmi 
Lasius niger. Limoges, 1908. 
