298 BRITISH ANTS. 



" Viehmeyer, Donisthorpe, and Wasmann have shown that the 

 female sanguined establishes her colony by entering a fusca nest, 

 appropriating some of the pupae and killing or driving away any 

 of the fusca workers that venture to attack her or seek to deprive 

 her of her booty. She guards the kidnapped young, and eventually 

 helps them to hatch, thereby surrounding herself with a troop of 

 nurses for her own brood as soon as she begins to lay. This method 

 of colony formation in the typical sanguinea is the same as that 

 first described by myself [W. Wheeler] for our American subspecies 

 rubicunda and subintegra." 19 



Since Wheeler first suggested how sanguinea queens found their 

 colonies, a number of observations in nature and experiments with 

 captive ants of these species have been published, making us ac- 

 quainted with the different stages of colony founding. 



In the summer of 1898 Schmitz saw a female F. sanguinea 

 endeavouring to enter the different doors of a F. fusca nest, near 

 Exaeten, going in by one door, then coming out and re-entering by 

 another, and so several times backwards and forwards ; the 

 numerous F. fusca workers about did not hinder her, but Schmitz is 

 now unable to remember if she was finally accepted 61 . 



Wasmann records that he once found at Exaeten in Holland a 

 dead sanguinea female in a rufibarbis nest, held by the legs and 

 antennae by a number of the rufibarbis workers 61 . On September 

 15th, 1887, he observed at Exaeten a small sanguinea-fusca colony 

 in which the sanguinea workers were all small and not fully coloured, 

 their numbers at the most not exceeding a hundred individuals, 

 while the fusca workers to the number of about two hundred were 

 all large and mature, the only queen present being a sanguinea 

 female 51 . Again on May 23rd, 1889, in the same locality, he 

 discovered a very small colony consisting of only ninety fusca 

 workers, a sanguinea queen, and five freshly-hatched workers of 

 the latter 51 61 . 



In the spring of 1909 Forel, when in company with Wheeler and 

 Viehmeyer, found in Valais, under a stone, two fertile sanguinea 

 females in the middle of a small heap of cocoons of F. rufibarbis and 

 some workers of the latter, the little colony also containing a dozen 

 small sanguinea workers, which were older than those of the rufi- 

 barbis. 65 



Viehmeyer also records the last observation, and in the middle 

 of August of the same year, near Dresden, he found under a stone 

 in a small earth-hole a sanguinea female, two very small sanguinea 

 workers, and three equally small fusca workers. On searching 

 further, & fusca female was discovered, two more fusca workers, and 

 some pupae. This made him think of an alliance between the 

 sanguinea and fusca females, as the workers of the former were 

 certainly not younger than those of the latter. He put a sanguinea 

 and fusca female together, and in four days they were quite friendly 



