SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS. 119 
them, carried them into the nest, and from that day until De- 
cember 1887, more than six months, there was only one other 
death. [Two of the F. sanguinea are still (August 1888) alive.] 
Although then it may be true, as to which I express no opinion, 
that there are nests of F. sanguinea without slaves, still this 
observation seems to indicate that the slaves perform some im- 
portant function in the economy of the nest. It still remains 
to be determined in what exactly this function cousists. 
Ant-Guests. 
Dr. Wasmann has recently published * an interesting memoir 
on certain of these “ Ant-guests.” His observations relate ex- 
clusively to some of the beetles which live with ants. 
He confirms V. Hagen’s statement that the specimens of 
Atemeles emarginatus which live with Myrmica Icevinodis , a 
yellow ant, are paler in colour than those which share the nests 
of the black Formica fusca. He entirely confirms the statements 
of previous observers that the Atemeles is actually fed by the 
ants, who also clean them just as they do their own fellows. The 
Atemeles also, on their part, perform the same kind offices 
for the ants. He also repeatedly saw the ants licking the 
bunches of golden hairs on the abdomen of the Atemeles. 
The Atemeles has adopted very closely the habits of the ants 
with which it lives. They pair, moreover, in the nests of the 
ants. Still, they are not entirely dependent on their hosts, like 
some of the other ant-guests, but are able to feed themselves. 
Indeed the Myrmicas seem to drive them out of the nest to- 
wards the beginning of May. Dr. Wasmann is disposed to 
attribute this to the anxiety of the ants for their young. In 
Myrmica the pupae are naked, and he thinks the ants are afraid 
that the Atemeles w r ould be unable to resist the temptation of 
eating them. In support of this suggestion, he observes that in 
the nests of Formica sanguinea , xvhose pupae spin a silken cocoon 
and are therefore protected, he has found Atemeles as late as the 
end of June. He has not been able to satisfy himself whether 
the larvae of Atemeles are brought up in the ants’ nest or not; 
but inasmuch as while the Atemeles are far from rare, he has 
only found among them a single larva which could belong to the 
species, and even this w r as not certainly identified, it seems 
probable that the larval stage is passed elsewhere. 
* Deutsche Entoin. Zeitschrift. 1SS6, p. 49. 
11 * 
