46 Zoologica: N. Y. Zoological Society [III ; 3 



may be divided into two groups, miscellaneous arthropods and 

 ants. The former are probably very numerous but I have notes 

 only on the following five: 



1. In one abandoned petiole I found that a female katydid 

 had enlarged the opening with her jaws, had thrust her ovi- 

 positor through it and had deposited her flattened eggs in the 

 cavity. 



2. On another occasion I found a petiole of a young plant 

 mhabited by termites {Nasutitermes sp.) They had built an 

 earthen gallery along the stem from the ground to an opening 

 in the petiole and were living in the cavity. 



3. At the Penal Settlement, near Bartica, I found in one 

 old petiole the mature and pigmented pupa of a solitary wasp, 

 which Dr. J. Bequaert has identified as Podium ruficrus Fabr. 

 The mother wasp had stored the petiole with spiders, laid an egg 

 on them and sealed up the entrance. 



4. Another petiole, found near the laboratory, contained 

 a small, red female centipede, identified by Dr. R. V. Chamber- 

 lin as Otostigmus limbatus Meinert, previously known from 

 Brazil and Paraguay. She was coiled about her small, white, 

 recently hatched young. 



5. Some of the old and abandoned petioles on young trees 

 were occasionally seen to be inhabited by spiders, especially by 

 Attids. 



Inasmuch as the ants comprise the more numerous and more 

 important insects associated with the Tachigcdia they may be 

 considered in somewhat greater detail, and since their relations 

 to the plant are of five different kinds (Plate II) they may be 

 most conveniently grouped under as many captions. 



1. Defoliators. Only one species, Atta cephalotes L., the com- 

 mon leaf-cutting ant of Central America and northern South 

 America, was actually proved to defoliate young Tachigalias at 

 a time when many of their petioles were not inhabited by other 

 ants or inhabited only by recently fecundated queens of Pseu- 

 domyrma that had not yet produced their colonies of belligerent, 

 stinging workers. In the jungle behind the Penal Settlement 

 I observed a few such trees which had been either completely 



