SIK JOHN irBBOCK ON ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS. 269 



Three principal modes have been suggested. After the mar- 

 riage-flight the young queen may either — 



1. Join her own or some other old nest ; 



2. Associate herself with a certain number of workers, and 

 with their assistance commence a new nest ; or 



3. Found a new nest by herself. 



The question can of course only be settled by observation, and 

 the experiments made to determine it have hitherto been inde- 

 cisive. 



Blanchard, indeed, in his work on the ' Metamorphoses of In- 

 sects ' (I quote from Dr. Duncatfa translation, p. 205), says: — 

 " Huber observed a solitary female go down into a small under- 

 ground hole, take off her own wings, and become, as it were, 

 a worker ; then she constructed a small nest, laid a few eggs, and 

 brought up the larvse by acting as mother and nurse at the same 

 time." 



This, however, is not a correct version of what Huber says. 

 His words are: — "I enclosed several females in a vessel full of 

 light humid earth, with which they constructed lodges, where 

 they resided, some singly, others in common. They laid their 

 eggs and took great care of them ; and, notwithstanding the 

 inconvenience of not being able' to vary the temperature of their 

 habitation, they reared some, which became larvae of a tolerable 

 size, but which soon perished from the effect of mj own negli- 

 gence " *. 



It will be observed that it was the eggs, not the larvae, which, 

 according to Huber, these isolated females reared. It is true that 

 he attributes the early and uniform death of the larvae to his own 

 negligence, but the fact remains that in none of his observations 

 did an isolated female bring her offspring to maturity. 



Other entomologists, especially Forel and Ebrard, have repeated 

 the same observatious with similar results ; and as yet in no single 

 case has an isolated female been known to bring her young to 

 maturity. Porel even thought himself justified in concluding, 

 from his observations and from those of Ebrard, that such a 

 fact could not occur. 



Lepeletier de St. Fargeau t was of opinion that ants' nests ori- 

 ginate in the second mode indicated above, and it is, indeed, far 



* 'Natural History of Ants,' Huber, p. 121. 

 t Hist. Nat. des Ins. Hj-in^nopleres, toI. i. p. 143. 



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