20 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892. 



should be drawn. That Aphidce, Cocci, and lycsenid larvse are 

 distinctly cattle, there can be no doubt But in almost eyery ant's nest 

 {or to speak more correctly in the immediate neighbourhood of it) 

 may almost always be found a crowd of Invertehrata. Thus one and 

 the same stone may cover a colony of Prenolepis longicornis , and 

 the entrance to the nest of a Pheidole, and even possibly to that of a 

 third species, and besides this, may be found to shelter " wood-lice " 

 {Oniscus), " Fish insects" [Lejmma), Chellfera, and true insects, 

 of widely different families, as beetles, bugs, cockroaches, crickets, 

 &c., &c. It is impossible, as a rule, however, to say whether there is 

 any connexion between these and the ants, and, still more so, to define 

 the relation between them. That there is sometimes a connexion 

 between Lepisma and certain species (curiously enough usually 

 Poneridce) is shown by the observations on Anochetus, which I have 

 recorded further on, but even in that case, I failed to make out what 

 the relation was. The only case of ' pets' I have met with is re- 

 corded in my notice of Pheidole Wroughtoni, and even in that case it 

 remains doubtful whether these beetles {Paussus sp. ) should not rather 

 be regarded as cattle. The fact that beetles, of this same genus, 

 are in other countries, also found domesticated in ant's-nests, seems 

 to me to indicate, that they really are ' cattle ', rather than mere 

 platonic 'pets.' 



The crickets found by Mr. Aitken in the nest of Plagiolepis 

 longipes, woul5d seem to be ' parasites ' rather than ' pets ' ; they 

 apparently lived where they were found, for their own convenience 

 and not for the ants' pleasure. 



Mimicry. — If imitation is the sincerest flattery, then the ants are 

 , in danger of haviiig their heads turned, so widespread and marked 

 is the imitation of them, by spiders and other insects. What, 

 however, is the cause or object of this mimicry, I have, in no case, been 

 able to make out. Is it a case of the ' sheep in wolf's clothing,' or 

 the reverse ? Amongst the most persistent of the ants' flatterers are 

 the spiders. Mr. Hothney has already recorded in his paper that 

 certain spiders take the form of 8ima rufo-nigra (Jerd.) and 8ima 

 nigra (Jerd.) Besides these, I have found several specimens of a 

 spider, which, at a short distance, is almost indistinguishable from a 5 

 of Camponotus opaciventris, whose mode of progression by a series of 



