DONISTHORPEA. 221 



in the normal female and Evans captured one on the Isle of May 

 on September 24th, 1910. 



Bondroit kindly presented me with a pterergate which he took 

 in October, 1910, in a colony of D. flava at Landelies in the provence 

 of Hainaut, in Belgium. It is a large dark worker measuring 

 4 - 8 mm. in length and has a pair of vestigial wings, one on each side 

 of the mesonotum, measuring about -4 mm. in length. 



The eggs are laid in the autumn on September 15th, 1911, 

 I found a colony of D. flava under a stone on a small Island in 

 Tobermoray Bay which contained one queen, a number of workers, 

 many of them large and dark, and many packets of eggs 42 . Eggs are 

 laid again in the spring in April or May. F. Smith states that it is a 

 remarkable circumstance that the larvae of D. flava, which pass 

 the winter in that state are densely covered with pubescence 7 , 

 but these would be young larvae hatched from eggs laid in the 

 autumn, and all young ant larvae are much more hairy than full 

 grown ones. The females of this species, as we have already stated, 

 are capable of founding their colonies unaided, being many times 

 larger than the workers or males, and abundantly endowed with 

 the necessary reserve force for a protracted fast. Isolated females 

 may frequently be found in the autumn in situations suitable for 

 the formation of their colonies. On October 28th, 1908, I dug up 

 many dealated females from little cells with egg packets in the soft 

 muddy sand of the undercliff at Luccombe Chine 35 , and again on 

 August 26th, 1913, a number of isolated dealated females, some 

 with egg-packets, were seen at Blackgang Chine, in small cells 

 under stones and lumps of soft greensand 45 . 



Ernst proved that this species is self -founding in captivity. In 

 October, 1902, he found at Le Chenois a dealated female under a 

 stone, where she had constructed a small cell. This female he took 

 home, and from eggs laid by her on April 22nd, 1903, larvae ap- 

 peared in August and pupae in October, the first worker hatch- 

 ing on November 9th, eleven months after the finding of the 

 queen 31 . 



Ordinarily the fertilized female brings up her brood alone, but 

 sometimes two or more such females may join together to do so. 

 Forel, about 1873, found under a stone on the Saleve a neat cell 

 occupied by two fertile flava females without brood 14 , and Wheeler 

 on June 15th, 1907, while collecting at Sion in Canton Valais, 

 found two dealated queens of Donisthorpea flava under a stone in 

 a small earthen cavity a few cm. in diameter, in which they were 

 nursing a single packet of eggs and young larvae. Both hastened 

 to remove the brood when the stone was lifted 36 . 



On April 19th, 1914, Collins and I found a small incipient colony 

 of D. flava under a stone at Bletchington, which consisted of three 

 dealated females, a few very small workers, and a number of little 

 larvae, all three females resting close together on the brood. 



