















64 NOTES ON MEXICAN ANTS. 
a space of from six to ten square yards; where they pass,all | 
the rest of the insect world is in commotion and alarm. Th 
stream along the ground and climb to the summit of all 
lower trees, searching every leaf to its apex.” They : 
often seen with the larve and eggs and remains of other 
ants, doubtless the result of attacks upon their nests. Their ~ 
own nests have never yet been discovered. a 
Tn one case he thus chronicles the result of his examina- 3 
tion of Æ. legionis. One evening he discovered a column ~ 
of them at work. The next day he found them again not far | 
off. They were mining in a bank of light soil, and extract- 
ing therefrom a bulky species of Formica, with their larvæ 
and eggs. It was curious to see them crowding around ti 
orifices of the mines, and assisting their comrades to lift out 
the bodies of the luckless ants; the latter being too bulky” | 
to carry were torn to pieces, and the marauders forthwith 
started off laden with their booty. “For some distance there 
= were many lines of these moving along the declivity of th a 
bank, but at a short distance these converged. I then — 
traced them to a large and indurated and ancient termita- — 
rium; up the ascent of these the Ecitons were moving in: 
dense column, like a stream of liquid metal; many were 
lugging up the bodies of the Formicæ, and the whole di 
peared in one of the spacious tubular cavities, which alw 
traverse these old termitaria from the summit to the base 3 
Pachycondyla. In this genus the node of the peduncle 15 
thickened, cubical, or nearly so, elevated to the same i 
as the first segment, and usually of nearly the same wi 
The eyes are small and inserted low down upon the hea 
The spurs of only the two anterior tibiæ are pectinate. (M 
Smith says all are pectinate. ) By! 
Pachycondyla Orizabana. “It lives at Orizaba in Mti 
societies under stones and trunks of trees.” r 
Pseudomyrma. In this genus the first node is elo 
pedunculate, the second large and globose. The anten 
inserted near together and near the mouth ; eyes elong 
