116 SIE J. LUBBOCK ON ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS. 



however, pointed out that the workers were in fact workers of 

 Tetramorium ccdspitum ; and it would appear that while in Stron- 

 gylognathus the workers are comparatively few, Anergates differs 

 from all other ants in having no workers at all *. The males and 

 females live with Tetramorium ccespitum, and are in several respects 

 very peculiar : for instance, the male is wingless. One might con- 

 sider it rather a case of parasitism than of slavery ; but the diffi- 

 culty is that in these mixed nests there are no males and females 

 of Tetramorium. It seems quite clear that Anergates cannot 

 procure its slaves, if such they are, by marauding expeditions like 

 those of Polyergus — in the first place because they are too few, 

 and secondly because they are too weak. The whole question is 

 rendered still more difficult by the fact that neither Von Hagenf 

 nor Porel found either larvae or pupae o^ Tetra^norium in the mixed 

 nests. The community consisted of males and females of Aner- 

 gates, accompanied and tended by workers of Tetramorium ccBspi- 

 tum. The Anergates are absolutely dependent upon their slaves, 

 and cannot even feed themselves. The whole problem is most 

 puzzling and interesting. On the whole I would venture to 

 suggest that the female Anergates makes her way into a nest of 

 Tetramorium, and in some manner contrives to assassinate their 

 queen. It must be admitted that even this hypothesis does not 

 fully account for the facts. Still, I have shown that a nest of ants 

 may continue even in captivity for five years without a queen. 

 If, therefore, the female of Anergates could by violence or poison 

 destroy the queen of the Tetramoriums, we should in the following 

 year have a community composed in the manner described by 

 Von Hagen and Eorel. This would naturally not have suggested 

 itself to them, because if the life of an ant had, as was formerly 

 supposed, been confined to a single season, it would, of course, 

 have been out of the question ; but as we now know that the life 

 of ants is so much more prolonged than had been supposed, it is 

 at least not an impossibility. 



At any rate the four genera of so-called slave-making ants offer 

 us every gradation from lawless violence to contemptible parasi- 

 tism. Formica sanguinea, which may be assumed to have compa- 



* In Tomognathus svhlmvis, on the contrary, a Finland species, which liyes 

 in the nests of Leptothorax mttsc&rum and L. acervorum, the workers only are 

 known, 



t Verh. des natur. Vereins der preuss. Rheinlande und Westphalens, 1867, 

 p. 53. 



