282 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



and, indeed, was considered by many earlier writers to occur only in 

 such situations. However, it seems that such occurrences must be 

 entirely accidental, as it has been my good fortune to discover a 

 locality in North London in which nests of this ant are by no means 

 rare. A damp wooded spot with a clay subsoil covered in moss 

 seems to provide ideal conditions. The colonies are usually situated 

 at the foot of a tree, preferably a few inches from the trunk, on the 

 western side. There is no external indication of the nest, which 

 consists merely of a small hollow, never more than an inch below the 

 surface in summer. This cavity has only one small aperture, through 

 which ants engaged in foraging are able to gain the surface of the 

 soil, where, however, they take every advantage of cover provided 

 by dead leaves, etc., rarely appearing in the open and never straying 

 far from the nest. The colonies are never very populous, about 200 

 workers being the maximum number that I have found. Some 

 forty workers and one dealated female constitutes a typical colony, 

 but in July last I found one nest containing no less than six dealated 

 females and only seventeen workers. The winged forms do not 

 appear until the end of August and remain in the nests until quite 

 late in the year. I still have both sexes in my observation nests 

 (November 1st). The food apparently consists entirely of small 

 insects and other animal matter. I cannot induce them to touch 

 honey or other sweet materials. Eggs and larvae are present all the 

 year round. The larvae particularly are interesting. The body is 

 much more globular than is usual in ant larvae, and the head is 

 mounted on a somewhat lengthy neck — in fact the whole thing- 

 is very like a retort in shape. When a dead insect — for example, 

 a Culicid — is brought in, it is cut up and the pieces piled among the 

 larvae, which proceed to devour them, their mobile necks giving them 

 a considerable range of movement. The only Myrmecophile that I 

 have found in the nests is Gyphodeirus albinos Nicolet, belonging to 

 the Collembola. — Wm. E. H. Hodson ; Harlev Lodge, Enfield, 

 November 1st, 1922. 



Butterflies attracted to Human Perspiration. — The names 

 of the butterflies referred to in my note on the above (ante, p. 212) can 

 now be supplied. They are — Lycaenidae: Lycaenesthes ligures Hew., 

 Hypolycaena antifaunus Dbl. & Hew., Catochrysops malathana 

 Bois. Acraeinae : Acraea peneleos Ward., subsp. pelasgius Gr. Sm. — 

 N. C. E. Millar; 90, Alleyn Eoad, Dulwich, S.E. 



RECENT LITERATURE. 



The Genitalia of the Tortricidae. By F. N. Pierce and The Rev. 

 J. W. Metcalfe. ' Pp. 101. 31 plates. 



The joint authors of this very valuable work are to be congratulated 

 on the successful completion of their task of working out the genitalia 

 of this important division of the Lepidoptera. 



The volume is of course another instalment of Mr. Pierce's gigantic 

 hfe- work on the genitalia of the whole of the British Lepidoptera. 



