FORMICA. 287 



" One evening I visited another community of F. sanguined, and 

 found a number of these ants returning home and entering their 

 nests, carrying the dead bodies of F. fusca (showing that it was 

 not a migration) and numerous pupae. I traced a long file of ants 

 burthened with booty, for about forty yards back, to a very thick 

 clump of heath, whence I saw the last individual of F. sanguined 

 emerge, carrying a pupa ; but I was not able to find the desolated 

 nest in the thick heath. The nest, however, must have been close 

 at hand, for two or three individuals of F. fusca were rushing 

 about in the greatest agitation, and one was perched motionless 

 with its own pupa in its mouth on the top of a spray of heath, an 

 image of despair over its ravaged home." 34 



Farren- White records that on July 3rd, 1877, when at Shirley 

 with one of his sisters, he secured a nest of Formica sanguinea there 

 and " While carefully examining the sanguinea ground for 

 there were several nests besides the one I had secured I was not 

 a little interested in observing a worker of sanguinea carrying a pupa 

 smaller than the pupae I had appropriated from the captured 

 citadel, and I was still further interested in noticing another worker 

 of sanguinea hastening along with a similar burden, and yet another 

 and another, each laden with what evidently was a precious charge. 

 The little carriers were hurrying forward with a jubilant and 

 trumphant air, and a peculiar cantering motion, and nothing would 

 turn them from their course. Soon we noticed that numbers of 

 sanguinea were carrying burdens, a few being larvae, but almost 

 all the burdens were pupae. The jocund little people seemed all 

 eager to reach their home,, which as usual was formed around a 

 gorse stump. Some were marching quicker than the rest ; their 

 powers of endurance were evidently greater, and those who lagged 

 behind were perhaps weary with their long journey and with the 

 weight of their burdens, since we could see that they had come 

 from far. I watched one worker, who travelled thirteen of my 

 paces in three minutes, stopped a little to converse with a slave it met 

 with on its way, and hastened on to its nest. I watched one worker 

 of sanguinea travel twenty-three paces or yards, and carry the 

 pupae to its nest. On its way it fairly outstripped two others who 

 were journeying in the same direction and on the same errand. I 

 was determined to trace back the scattered file of sanguinea to the 

 spot from whence they had come, and so ascertain from whence they 

 had obtained their precious burdens. I walked back forty-six 

 paces, and discovered that they were filing out of a nest among 

 the fern, and from this nest to their own there was constant motion, 

 constant activity, and constant excitement. But what of the nest 

 which was evidently being pillaged of its infant inmates ? There 

 were two workers of F. fusca running frantically about upon the 

 surface, with pupae in their mandibles ; and, in order evidently to 

 escape from the fell determination of the marauders who were 



