DONISTHORPEA. 227 



Haddington : Luffness Links 58 , near Gullane 33 (Evans). 

 Kincardine : Stonehaven (Rothney). 



Donisthorpea umbrata is widely distributed in Britain, but it is 

 by no means a common ant; its occurrence is sporadic, and its 

 colonies are generally more or less isolated. 



It lives on sandy heaths, in fields, in the clearings of woods, in 

 banks, on cliffs, and on sand-hills, etc., nesting in the earth, often in 

 and at the roots of trees and old stumps, in decayed wood, and 

 under stones. It is sometimes found in walls and houses, and 

 occasionally makes earth mounds. 



Forel mentions an immense colony he found in 1875 at Munich 

 in the foundations of the front of a building, extending for a 

 length of twenty paces 15 , and Morley records that Tuck discovered 

 a colony in his house at Tostock in Suffolk 32 . 



D. umbrata is a phlegmatic ant and is hardly ever to be seen 

 above ground, being even more subterranean in habits than 

 D. flava, and its food chiefly consists of the excreta of Aphidae and 

 Coccidae, though it also kills and devours small insects, etc. 



I found a number of workers of a large form of umbrata (?) walking 

 about on the top of the sand-hills at Tenby in April, 1913, and much 

 digging in the sand only produced more workers. Some of these 

 which somewhat resemble the continental D. affinis Schenck, 

 though much more closely related to umbrata were introduced 

 into my mixto-umbrata and umbrata observation nest and were 

 all killed by the latter ants, whereas workers of umbrata from 

 Wellington College introduced into this nest in 1913, and from 

 Woking and other places in 1912, were all well received 66 . 



D. umbrata will receive strange workers of their own species, 

 but will kill workers of D. mixta when introduced into their nest, 

 though I have found they will rear mixta larvae, when given to 

 them in captivity. They will also readily rear pupae of D. fuligi- 

 nosa. 



On May 1st, 1910, I observed a large number of small empty 

 land shells (Caecilioides acicula Mull.) in the galleries of a nest of 

 umbrata situated under a stone at Box Hill ; the ants appeared to 

 have collected all the shells together and were resting on them as 

 they do with their own brood 53 . It is however exceedingly doubtful 

 that the ants were under the impression that the shells were pupae, 

 or that they would serve as food. 



Schenck mentions that umbrata possesses a much stronger odour 

 than flava* it is in fact similar to, though not so pronounced as, 

 that possessed by fuliginosa and as Brun points out, it is situated 

 in the head 64 . 



This ant also makes carton, though not to the same extent as 

 fuliginosa. In December, 1910, Crawley and I dug up a nest of 

 umbrata at Weybridge which I had known for some time, and 



