MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 649 



No. XLII.— THE HABITS OF ANTS. 



At this time of year the mason wasps, if that is the right name for the 

 wasp like insects that build mud huts on the ceiling, in the angles of the 

 walls, under chairs and tables or even against windows, are very busy 

 bringing caterpillars and storing them in these larders against the hatching 

 of their eggs. I once had a piccolo stuffed with caterpillars and sealed 

 with mud. One of these, rather more than an inch long, had been dropped 

 on my window sill and a small ant was prospecting around this leviathan 

 when I noticed it. When I next looked a minute or two later, a line of 

 some 25 or 80 of the same species was moving obliquely up the wall to the 

 corner where the end of the window sill projected beyond the wall. They 

 went straight to the caterpillar and began to catch hold of it all round, a 

 proceeding which the caterpillar was inclined to resent. It was comatose, 

 but not completely paralysed, and time after time the ants at the tail end 

 were flung violently off or half crushed. The ants at the head seemed to 

 have no difliculty in holding that part down. Did the ants merely hold 

 tight with their jaws, or did they too add a little poison to the dose from 

 which the caterpillar was already suffering ? Some minutes passed at any 

 rate, and when I looked again, caterpillar, ants and all had disappeared. I 

 found them under the ledge of the window sill, some 8 or 9 inches from 

 the original spot. The caterpillar was not yet helpless ; with a final effort 

 he broke his nether end loose from the ants and it hung suspended, and for 

 the ants, out of reach. It was a tremendous strain for them to prevent the 

 front part from falling but they succeeded ; three or four minutes perhaps 

 passed, when to ray great surprise a relief party appeared of at least 50 

 travelling up the wall in the same oblique line. This party did not go to 

 the place where their help was urgently required, but straight to the 

 place where the caterpillar was originally lying ; their arrival at the 

 critical moment seems to have been merely a coincidence. They spent an 

 appreciable time hunting round the place for the caterpillar above and 

 then found the track by which it had been removed and very quickly 

 brought the hind part of the caterpillar back to a horizontal position. 

 The caterpillar had been removed by almost exactly the same route by 

 which both parties of ants had come up ; yet the second party passed it 

 hurriedly without the smallest notice on their way to the top of the window 

 sill, although some of the first party moving around the caterpillar and the 

 second party, must have come in contact. From this point there was no 

 further difliculty ; after travelling about ten feet, down the wall along the 

 same oblique line, along the floor and over a ledge, caterpillar and all 

 disappeared into a crevice in the chunam floor. These ants were of a small 

 black variety, long-legged, almost spidery in appearance ; but one came 

 with the second party rather larger and much more heavily built ; it took 

 ian intelligent interest in the proceedings but never offered to help. 



J. SLADEN, i.c.s. 

 Bajkot, 2Mh August 1913. 



