TAPINOMA. 181 



Surrey : Coombe Wood and Wey bridge (Grant) 9 ; near Guild- 

 ford (Stevens) 11 ; Chobham (Saunders) 22 ; Shirley (Farren-White) 29 ; 

 near Croydon (Saunders) 22 ; Woking (Donisthorpe) 35 . 



Dumfries : Dumfries (Service) 31 . 



This ant loves dry places exposed to the sun, and occurs chiefly 

 on sandy heaths and commons in Britain. In Switzerland it 

 ranges as high as the sub -alpine regions, Forel having found it at 

 a height of 1200 metres on the Rigi, etc. 17 It nests in the earth, 

 under stones, on banks, etc., but its subterranean galleries do not 

 extend very deeply into the ground, and temporary domes of 

 variable sizes are built of earth and other materials in order to 

 concentrate heat and to help to hatch the eggs and pupae. These 

 domes sometimes consist of masses of earth built around the stems 

 of grass and other herbage above the chambers of the nest which 

 are underground. A mound nest of Tapinoma erraticum which I 

 found in the New Forest was built of bits of burnt heather, grass, 

 and grains of sand, etc., about six inches high and the same in 

 diameter. 



Santschi describes eleven different methods in which this ant 

 constructs its nests in Tunis 34 . 



T. erraticum has a rather soft body, but is very agile, darting 

 rapidly about in the sunshine, its antennae continuously vibrating, 

 and its gaster, which is very mobile, being raised when the ant is 

 in motion. When the sun is obscured these ants immediately 

 disappear, and on cold and cloudy days very few specimens are to 

 be found away from the nest. 



They frequently leave their nesting-place and migrate to a fresh 

 one generally near at hand, but sometimes at some distance 

 from the old one when they follow one another in files, carrying 

 their larvae and pupae, the males and winged females following in 

 the procession, the whole process not lasting much longer than an 

 hour. The fertile females carry about the eggs and larvae, and the 

 workers sometimes carry their fellows, in which case the carrier 

 seizes the other ant by the thorax, or a leg, and runs off with her, 

 the latter keeping the legs and antennae closely folded against the 

 body as if she were a pupa. 



The pupae (as we have seen is the case with all ants of the sub- 

 family to which this species belongs) are always naked, but F. Smith 

 writes in 1856 " On the last occasion of Mr. Grant's visiting the 

 colony of Tapinoma, at Coombe Wood, the males and females were 

 in the pupa state, spun up in silken cocoons." 9 This undoubtedly 

 shows that on this occasion the ant in question certainly was not 

 Tapinoma erraticum, but most probably Donisthorpea nigra. 



This ant is chiefly carnivorous, but will eat a little honey, or 

 sugar ; it does not appear to keep Aphidae in its nests in Europe, 

 though Santschi tells me it does so in Tunis ; and but rarely visits 



