FORMICA. 307 



nests, and though the hidden entrances of the latter enable it to 

 live close to and in the neighbourhood of other species, it is always 

 liable to be raided by them. The workers do not forage together 

 in troops, but go out singly hunting insects, attending Aphidae on 

 bushes, etc., and visiting flowers they may frequently be seen in 

 the flowers of umbelliferae, and H. Miiller records thirty -eight 

 visits of fusca workers to different flowers, twenty-four to alpine 

 plants alone 28 . 



Dr. Chapman observed workers of F. fusca attending beetles 

 (Larinus onopordi) on thistles at Gavarnie on July 29th, 1914, 

 four or five ants being at work on a single beetle ; they were not 

 attacking the insect, and it would seem they were obtaining a 

 secretion of some sort from it. 



The workers may be seen returning to their nests, bringing in 

 flies, remains of beetles and other insects, and they will attack the 

 males and females of Donisthorpea nigra and flava, etc., after the 

 marriage flight, and carry them off as food. 



Lubbock writes of the hunting habits of this ant as follows : 



" Some species, such as Formica fusca, live principally on the 

 produce of the chase ; for though they feed partly on the honey- 

 dew of aphides, they have not domesticated these insects. These 

 ants probably retain the habits once common to all ants. They 

 resemble the lower races of men, who subsist mainly by hunting. 

 Like them they frequent woods and wilds, live in comparatively 

 small communities, and the instincts of collective action are but 

 little developed among them. They hunt singly, and their battles 

 are single combats, like those of the Homeric heroes." 33 



It is not, however, correct to say that F. fusca has not domesti- 

 cated aphides, as although Forel stated that the ants of the genus 

 Formica never rear plant-lice in their nests, but only seek them 

 on plants, on September 9th, 1874, he observed at Andermatt a 

 number of large yellow root Aphidae in a nest of F. fusca under a 

 stone, and he saw the ants carry them into safety. He remarks 

 that this is the only time he had seen these insects in a fusca nest, 

 but he must modify his former statement 26 . I have frequently found 

 aphides in fusca nests, comprising some six species, and on October 

 25th, 1908, I captured a fusca worker at Luccombe Chine, which 

 was carrying an aphis in its jaws home to the nest situated in the 

 side of the cliff. 



Lubbock kept individual specimens of this ant alive for con- 

 siderable periods ; he possessed workers which were at least 

 seven years old, and two queens which were much older. He 

 says : 



" One of these queens, after ailing for some days, died on the 

 30th July, 1887. She must then have been more than 13 years 

 old. I was at first afraid that the other one might be affected 

 by the death of her companion. She lived, however, until the 



