108 BRITISH ANTS. 



Farren-White in 1876 observed a swarm of ants near Stonehouse 

 rising and falling over a small beech tree. The effect of those in 

 the air gyrating and meeting each other in their course, as seen 

 against the deep blue sky reminded him of the little dodder, with 

 its tiny clustered blossoms and its network of ramifying scarlet 

 threads, over the gorse or heather at Bournemouth. He noticed 

 the swarm about thirty paces off, and it began to assume the 

 appearance of curling smoke ; at forty paces he could quite imagine 

 the tree to be on fire. At fifty paces the smoke had nearly vanished 

 into thin air. He captured some and found them to be the males of 

 Myrmica laevinodis. The males generally die shortly after the 

 marriage flight, but Lord Avebury kept two males of Myrmica 

 ruginodis alive from August till the following Spring, one living till 

 May, and Janet had males living from October till the following 

 April. The females are capable of founding their colonies alone, a 

 fact which was first demonstrated by Lord Avebury, who suc- 

 ceeded in rearing a brood from eggs laid by females in captivity ; 

 the workers reared in this experiment remained about six weeks 

 in the egg, a month in the larval state, and twenty-five to twenty- 

 seven days as pupae. Janet found the times occupied for the 

 development of Myrmica workers to be eggs, twenty -two to 

 twenty-four days ; larvae, thirty to seventy-one days ; and pupae 

 eighteen to twenty-two days : total seventy-one to one hundred 

 and seventeen days. In nature larvae are always present in the 

 winter, and the brood is arranged in different heaps according to size, 

 in observation nests the eggs and young larvae are generally kept 

 in the dampest chambers, and the pupae in the dryer ones. 



Their colonies are of medium size, but sometimes very large and 

 also quite small ones occur, the species varying in this respect. 

 Many females may be present in the same nest, and this is caused 

 by the re -seeking of their own colonies by females which have been 

 fertilized near their own nest, an instance of Wasmann's secondary 

 Pleometrose. Microgynes occur in some colonies, and they may 

 also be present in company with ordinary females, intermediate 

 forms not being found. The males and females are of equal size 

 and are not much larger than the workers, the latter varying very 

 little amongst themselves. 



In 1810 Latreille [Cons. Gen. Crust. Ins. 312 No. 445, 437 (1810)] 

 cites Formica rubra (L.) F., as the type of the genus Myrmica. 

 Westwood [Mod. Class. Ins. 2 Syn. Gen. 83 (1840)], Girard [Traite 

 Elem. Ent. 2 1016 (1879)], Bingham [Faun. Brit. India Hym. 2 

 265 (1903)], and Wheeler [Ann. New York Acad. Sc. 21 168 (1911)] 

 also all cite rubra L. as type, and the last-named author [Ann. New 

 York Acad. Sc. 23 79 (1913)] adopts Girard's citation. 



Emery (Deutsch. Ent. Zeitsch. 1908 169) points out that Linne's 

 words " pessime nostratum pungens " show that when he described 

 his Formica rubra he evidently had before him one, or both, of the 



