MYRMICA. 113 



warlike of our species and frequent combats occur between different 

 colonies. Forel 10 describes such a combat which he witnessed in 

 Switzerland between two colonies of M. laevinodis, their fury 

 being so great that he was unable to separate them, the ants using 

 their stings with great effect. 



Dr. Sharp 22 states that it lives in perfect harmony with Formica 

 rufa, but this would only be an accidental occurrence, just as were 

 the three colonies Myrmica laevinodis, Donisthorpea flava, and 

 Formica rufibarbis found by Wasmann under the same stone in 

 Dutch Limburg 18 . Their colonies are often large and populous, and 

 sometimes they found branch nests, in the same manner as do some 

 species of the Genera Formica and Donisthorpea. In April, 1900, at 

 Oddington, near Oxford, Crawley noticed some workers of M. 

 laevinodis crossing a path in a shrubbery, carrying larvae. The 

 ants were traced, and found to be conveying larvae from one nest 

 in a rotten stump to another also in a stump. The first stump was 

 nearly covered with moss, which would most likely account for the 

 desertion. Further investigation showed that the colony, which 

 was of enormous size, occupied four nests, all but one of which 

 were in rotten stumps, and workers were continually crossing 

 from one to another. The space occupied by the nests was roughly 

 12 yds. by 6 yds. Workers from each nest were placed on the 

 others, which they entered without molestation 31 . There is generally 

 a number of fertile females in the same colony ; this is due as has 

 been before stated to the females re- seeking their own colony after 

 having been fertilized near their own nest (Wasmann's Secondary 

 Pleometrose 28 ). 



The winged forms are to be found in the nests from June to 

 September, but I took four females, each with two or three wings, 

 in a colony under a stone at Bletchington near Oxford on May 17th, 

 1913, which had no doubt remained in the nest since the previous 

 summer. 



The wings often vary in this species ; Nylander 2 describes and 

 figures the fore -wing of a male in which the marginal vein entirely 

 divides the cubital cell, B. S. Harwood captured a male at 

 Sydmonton in which the right fore-wing is exactly as in Nylander's 

 figure, and Hallett took another male at Cardiff in which both 

 fore-wings differ from the typical form 32 . 



Forel records the capture of some very small virgin females in 

 nests at Vaux in 1868 12 these would be microgynes, of which 

 I found one in a colony which was sent to me by Hallett, taken by 

 Tomlin at Mathon near West Malvern, situated in an old boot. 

 In this case the female had been fertilized ; she only measures 

 five mm. in length, and is smaller than her own workers. Wasmann 

 has also found a number of these small females in colonies at Exaeten 

 in Holland. 



Joseph Chappell captured a gynandromorphous specimen of 





