160 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
poultry yard. Warm afternoons in July and August, when the drone bees 
are out, we have seen the martins come down within ten feet of the hive 
and snap up the drone bees, thus relieving the workers from the necessity 
of expelling them from the hive and biting off their wings to prevent them 
from getting back to the hive. The king-bird also, we find, selects the 
drone, and will come afternoons and take his position on a stake in front 
of the hive, and when a drone bee comes along will make a rush for him, 
come back to the stake, give him a pick or two and swallow him. But 
says an objector, “ What do they subsist on before the drone bees fly 
out?” This point I settled by shooting one in the month of May, and 
I found in his crop the wings and legs of May-bugs. By watching their 
movements, I find the dragon-fiy is also a favorite food for them.—J. L. 
Hersey, American Bee Fournal. 
AGRICULTURAL ANTS.—Mr. Moggridge has observed at Menton, 
France, two species of ants (Aphenogaster) carrying into their nests, during 
the winter months, the seeds of certain late fruiting plants. He has traced 
their burrows to a spherical chamber filled with the seed of a grass which 
he had seen the ants in the act of transporting. ‘Outside the channels 
there was generally a heap of the husks of the various seeds, and some- 
times one of those heaps would fill a quart measure. These husks had 
had their farinaceous contents extracted through a hole in one side. He 
purposely strewed near the nests large quantities of millet and hemp 
seeds. After the lapse of a fortnight many of these seeds, previously 
conveyed into the nests, had been brought out again, they having evidently 
commenced to germinate, and he then found that the radicle was gnawed 
off from each seed, so as to prevent further growth, and, this being 
effected, the seeds were carried back again. The cotyledons of germinated 
seeds were removed from the nest.”—TZrans. Entomological Society of 
London, 1877. 
ADVERTISEMENTS. 
EXCHANGE.—I am desirous to exchange English for Canadian or 
American Lepidoptera. J. C. WassERMAN, Beverly Terrace, Cullercoats, 
North Shields, England. 
COLEOPTERA FOR SALE.—A number of Rocky Mountain Coleoptera. 
will soon be for sale in sets by JoHN AKHURST, 19, Prospect Street, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
