92 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [LECT. 



her. I repeated the experiment, with the same result, 

 more than once. 



I conclude then, that, at any rate in the case of 

 Lasius flavus, the workers will not adopt an old queen 

 from another nest. 



The following facts show that whether ants' nests 

 sometimes originate in the two former modes or not, 

 at any rate in some cases isolated queen ants are 

 capable of giving origin to a new community. On the 

 14th August, 1876, I isolated two pairs of Myrmica 

 ruginodis, which I found flying in my garden. I placed 

 them with damp earth, food, and water, and they 

 continued perfectly healthy through the winter. In 

 April, however, one of the males died, and the second 

 in the middle of May. The first eggs were laid between 

 the 12th and 23rd April. They began to hatch, the first 

 week in June, and the first larva turned into a chrysalis 

 on the 27th ; a second on the 30th ; a third on the 

 1st of July, when there were also seven larvae and two 

 eggs. On the 8th there was another egg. On the 

 8th July a fourth larva had turned into a pupa. On 

 the llth July I found there were six eggs, and on the 

 14th, about ten. On the 15th, one of the pupae began 

 to turn brown; and the eggs were about fifteen in 

 number. On the 16th, a second pupa began to turn 

 brown. On the 21st, a fifth larva had turned into a 

 pupa, and there were about twenty eggs. On the 

 22nd July, the first worker emerged, and a sixth larva 

 had changed. On the 25th, when 1 looked into the 

 nest, I observed the young worker carrying the larvse 

 about. A second worker was coming out. On 

 July 28th, a third worker emerged, and a fourth on 



