ANTS. 45 



the common sand-wasp (A. sabulosa, Linn.), which supplies its 

 young with caterpillars ; another (A. inferna, Heer, fig. 290, a 

 & b] is much larger, and reminds us of tropical forms. An ele- 

 gant species of the Scoliidae (fig. 297) has been preserved at 

 (Eningen : these insects now belong to southern regions. 



Ants constitute by far the most numerous family of the Hy- 

 menoptera at (Eningen, where forty-four species have already 

 been discovered. That they lived there, as now, in great socie- 

 ties is shown by the fact that the males and females of certain 

 species are found lying together in great quantities, especially 

 at Radoboj. Evidently the winged insects issued from their 

 nests in great crowds and swarmed into the air, where, being 

 carried over the water, they got drowned, and then became 

 buried in great masses in the mud. Similar swarms of ants may 

 be observed almost every year towards the end of summer ; but 

 they are particularly numerous in Switzerland in dry warm sea- 

 sons ; and not unfrequently they fall into a lake in such masses 

 as to cover a great extent of its surface. This sufficiently ex- 

 plains why, both at CEningen and Radoboj, we find almost ex- 

 clusively winged ants, and that the wingless workers are so ex- 

 tremely rare. Of the species found at (Eningen, twenty- one 

 belong to Formica, ten to Ponera, nine to Myrmica, and four to 

 the extinct genus Imlioffia. Some of the Formica are very large 

 insects, considerably larger than the Swiss wood-ant (Formica 

 herculeana, Linn.), which lives in old trunks of pines and firs, 

 and in other respects closely resembles a very widely distributed 

 fossil species (F. lignitum, Germ., fig. 292). Of this insect the 

 female (fig. 292, a) is frequently found ; but males (fig. 292, b) 

 and workers (fig. 292, c), most probably belonging to this species, 

 have also been detected at (Eningen. Most of the other ants 

 are small insects, which differ considerably from European forms ; 

 and this is still more strikingly the case with the Ponerce, which 

 are much larger than the two or three minute European species, 

 but yet cannot be compared with the tropical forms. They pro- 

 bably constitute a peculiar extinct genus. Three species (Po- 

 nera fuliginosa, affinis, and elongatula, Heer) are common to 

 (Eningen and Radoboj ; so that they must have had a wide area 

 of distribution. A beautifully preserved pair of an elegant spe- 

 cies (Ponera veneraria, Heer) is represented in fig. 288. 



