254 BRITISH ANTS. 



destroyed by the numbers of pupae taken from them -to feed 

 singing-birds 22 , but according to Wheeler, "a German law passed 

 in 1880, punishes with a fine of a hundred marks, or a month's 

 imprisonment, any person who collects the cocoons of the fallow 

 ant, Formica rufa, or wantonly disturbs its nests in the forest 

 preserves." 80 



They also bring home seeds ; Weiss has shown that the large 

 Wood Ant collects and helps to disperse the seeds of gorse and 

 broom 75 , and these seeds are provided with caruncles containing 

 a large amount of oil, and resembling therefore the elaiosomes of 

 other myrmecochorous plants. 



On July 21st, 1908, I made a small collection of seeds from a 

 nest of F. rufa at Chattenden, the seeds being obtained by taking 

 them from the ants as they arrived at their nest. These seeds 

 proved to belong to Viola sp ?, Carduus sp ?, Arrhenatherum 

 avenaceum, false oat-grass, Holcus lanatus, soft-grass, and with them 

 was a flower of the scarlet pimpernel 69 . The two first of these, the 

 violet and thistle, are true myrmecochorous seeds, possessing food 

 bodies, and were no doubt brought home for food, but the others 

 are not, and were probably only picked up to add to the vegetable 

 refuse on the nest. 



Saunders records honey-bees being destroyed by Formica rufa ; 

 in 1896, he writes " A friend of mine living at Long Cross, near 

 Chertsey, has had two hives of bees entirely destroyed by these 

 little creatures, and a third was only saved by the gardener opening 

 the hive and taking the ants out with his hands." 56 The ants 

 no doubt raided the hives for the honey, and bee larvae, and would 

 also carry off the bees themselves as prey. 



F. rufa may frequently be seen milking Aphides on trees and 

 shrubs, etc. ; Lees in 1837 recorded seeing them attending plant-lice 

 on thistle and brambles 10 , and Warner in 1871 on oak-twigs 33 , but 

 they are not supposed to harbour these insects in their nests. 

 F. Smith wrote : " I have not detected Aphides in the nests of this 

 species," 31 and Wasmann states that F. rufa does not keep any 

 Aphidae or Coccidae in its nests 88 . I have, however, several times 

 found species of both Aphidae and Coccidae in rufa nests. 



Pseudogynes are sometimes abundant in colonies of this species ; 

 in September, 1908, I first found these curious forms in a nest of 

 F. rufa at Nethy Bridge, a large proportion of the inhabitants of 

 the nest consisting of them 69 , and subsequently other colonies in the 

 same district were found to possess them, and in both 1911 and 1912 

 nearly all the rufa nests examined at Nethy Bridge contained pseu- 

 dogynes. On May 18th, 1912, one large nest, in the shape of a 

 perfect cone thirty-seven inches high and sixty-four inches in 

 diameter, was found to contain, besides vast quantities of ordinary 

 workers, many packets of eggs, larvae of all sizes in abundance, 

 large numbers of worker and large cocoons, very many winged 



