FORMICA. 309 



females of Formica carry the males, which are as large as the 

 females, during the marriage flight, and it seems impossible that a 

 female could fly, carrying two specimens at once. The early 

 morning is certainly not the time for the marriage flight of D. nigra, 

 but as the males were so fixed in the female that gentle pulling was 

 not enough to sever them, they might well have remained in this 

 condition since the evening before. 



There does not appear to be any other record of the actual 

 copulation of F. fusca, supposed, or otherwise. 



I captured a female fusca on the wing at Oxshott on July 7th, 

 1912 55 , and found a winged female and several freshly dealated 

 ones running on paths at Weybridge on July 29th, 1913 a 

 marriage flight having probably taken place that day and a male 

 flying near Lake, Isle of Wight, on August 26th, 1913. 



Wasmann suggests that the marriage flight takes place near the 

 nest 45 , which would account for the number of dealated females 

 often found in one nest, most of them having been received 

 back into their own community, for, as we shall see presently, 

 fusca colonies receive a strange fusca female with the greatest 

 animosity. 



Silverlock records finding eighteen dealated females in a fusca 

 nest under a large stone near Halifax 48 , and I have frequently 

 found many queens in a single fusca nest in the County Meath, at 

 Tenby, and on Lundy, etc. 



It is a curious fact that fusca nests which contain a number 

 of females are not as a rule more populous than those which possess 

 only one. 



The eggs are first laid in April, and worker pupae occur in nests 

 up to the beginning of the winter. 



Eggs laid by workers in queenless nests have, according to Lub- 

 bock 32 and others, only produced males. 



The pupae of this species are enclosed in cocoons, but naked 

 pupae also occur Schenck records finding them at Nassau 14 , 

 I found naked female pupae in a fusca nest at Weybridge on July 

 18th, 1912 55 , naked worker pupae in numbers at Box Hill on 

 July 30th, 1913, and also in Parkhurst Forest on August 23rd, 

 1913, in a nest under a fallen branch 60 . 



The workers carry out the empty cocoons, after the ants have 

 emerged from them, and scatter them outside the nest. 



The females of the F. fusca group undoubtedly found their 

 colonies unaided, incipient colonies having been observed in 

 nature, and have also been brought up in captivity. As has been 

 already stated, a fusca female will not be received into a strange 

 fusca colony, the workers always attacking and killing her. 



Forel says he has often seen fertile fusca females running in the 

 neighbourhood of a strange nest of her own species, and when she 

 has encountered workers of the latter they have at once killed 



