386 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [DECEMBER 
of any considerable size were found that had been entered by but 
a single queen. The queens are so numerous that many of the 
successive internodes become inhabited, and, as already stated, 
one not infrequently finds that several queens have penetrated into 
the same internodal cavity. So far as it was possible to determine, 
however, a large proportion of these queens perish before they 
have produced a brood. A very considerable number are killed 
by the parasitic Conoaxima asztecicida, others are killed by their 
rivals in conflicts for possession of a given internode, and, as soon 
as the workers become numerous, they cut through the nodal 
partitions and kill all but one of the surviving queens. 
When a young Azteca queen enters an internodal chamber, she 
covers the entrance aperture with a layer of triturated pith. The 
entrance subsequently becomes occluded by callus, which continues 
to grow internally, and finally projects some distance into the 
medullary cavity (fig. 4). Thus the queen is sealed within the 
internode during the period when she is initiating the new colony. 
In view of the fact that the queen is unable to leave her nest in 
search of food during a period of two months or more, MULLER, 
VON IHERING, and Fresric infer that she must feed upon medullary 
tissue and the inwardly projecting callus or ‘“‘stomatome.” It 
should be noted in this connection, however, that such an assump- 
tion is based upon two more or less fallacious premises: (1) that the 
queen must feed during her period of isolation, and (2) that tissues 
which are gnawed or excavated by ants actually are eaten by them. 
Most students of the Formicidae are familiar with the fact that 
female ants are able to do without food, except such as is stored in 
their own bodies, for the greater part of a year, while they are 
founding their colonies. Furthermore, it is well known that many 
ants tend to gnaw into and smooth the walls of their nests, regard- 
less of whether they are composed of living tissues or of inert 
materials. I was unable to find any evidence that the Azteca queens 
feed upon the tissues in the young internodes of C. angulata. The 
so-called stomatomes, upon which MULLER and von InERING place 
so much emphasis, are not uncovered and cut back by the queens 
until just before the first workers are ready to emerge from the 
nest, nor do they excavate the medullary tissue to any consider- 
