310 BRITISH ANTS. 



her 24 ; Lubbock records cases in which fertile females, introduced 

 into queenless nests, were ruthlessly attacked 31 ; Crawley made 

 several experiments with fusca queens and colonies of fusca, both 

 with and without queens, in all of which the strange females were 

 attacked 57 , and I have frequently endeavoured to introduce fusca 

 females into observation nests containing strange colonies of their 

 own species, but these queens have always been killed. 



There are however a few cases on record in which fusca females 

 have been accepted by strange races in observation nests. 



On June 1st, 1909, I introduced some workers of Formica fusca 

 var. glebaria taken in April at Whitsand Bay into a small glass 

 bowl, which contained sand, and a deflated female F. fusca taken 

 at Bradgate Park in May the female had laid a few eggs in a 

 small chamber underneath a piece of damp sponge. On June 27th 

 the rest of the glebaria workers taken at Whitsand Bay were intro- 

 duced, the queen was not attacked, and on July 4th all the workers 

 had collected under the sponge with her 51 . 



In October, 1909, Crawley introduced a number of F. subsericea 

 workers obtained in the United States to a female F. fusca from 

 England, and all were friendly with the queen. In 1912 the colony 

 was still in existence, and a few subsericea workers were still alive, 

 though a large number of fusca workers were present reared from 

 eggs laid by the queen 57 . 



It seems unlikely, however, that in nature a colony of fusca, or 

 its races, would be founded in any other way than by the normal, 

 viz. by one or more queens without workers. 



On June 25th, 1906, Wasmann found at Shotter Marial two 

 young fusca colonies under stones, the one containing a queen, with 

 six small workers, and a dozen worker larvae and pupae, and the 

 other two queens, six small workers, and a dozen half-grown 

 larvae 44 . In the latter case two young queens must have joined 

 together to bring up their family. For some years past I have 

 experienced considerable difficulty in finding a single nest of 

 F. fusca at Weybridge, which I attributed to the fact that F. 

 sanguinea had spread over the district and by continual raids had 

 nearly exterminated the fusca colonies, but in June, 1914, I found 

 a number of small colonies, under gorse roots and at the foot of fir 

 stumps, etc., many of them being incipient colonies containing 

 only a few small workers and brood. A number of males and 

 females must have been reared in some isolated nest, or nests, and 

 a fair proportion of the females, after the marriage flight, had 

 successfully founded new colonies. 



In the following cases broods have been brought up by females 

 from their eggs laid in captivity. 



Wasmann, in April, 1886, found a fertile female fusca running 

 about at Exaeten, and placed her in a small glass with some damp 

 earth and food. He did not look at it again till June 14th, when 



