92 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [user. 



3. Found a new nest by herself. 



The question can, of course, only be settled by obser- 

 vation, and the experiments made to determine it have 

 hitherto been indecisive. Blanchard indeed, in his 

 work on the Metamorphoses of Insects (I quote from 

 Dr. Duncan's translation, p. 205), says, "Huber observed 

 a solitary female go down into a small underground 

 hole, take off her own wings, and become, as it were, 

 a worker ; then she constructed a small nest, laid a 

 few eggs, and brought up the larvae by acting as 

 mother and nurse at the same time." 



This however is not quite a correct version of what 

 Huber says. His words are : " I enclosed several females 

 in a nest full of light humid earth, with which they 

 constructed lodges, where they resided ; some singly, 

 others in common. They laid their eggs and took 

 great care of them ; and notwithstanding the incon- 

 venience of not being able to vary the temperature 

 of their habitation, they reared some, which became 

 larvae of a tolerable size, but which soon perished 

 from the effect of my own negligence." 



It will be observed that it was the eggs not the 

 larvae which, according to Huber, these isolated 

 females reared. It is true that he attributes the early 

 and uniform death of the larvae to his own negligence ; 

 but the fact remains, that in none of his observations 

 did an isolated female bring her offspring to maturity. 

 Other entomologists, especially Forel and Ebrard, have 

 repeated the same observations, with similar results ; 

 and as yet in no single case has an isolated female 

 been known to bring her young to maturity. Forel 

 even thought himself justified in concluding from his 



