





















68 NOTES ON MEXICAN ANTS. 
arrieras is assembled for despgiling it of its leaves, is ordi- 
narily strewn with fragments cut off with the greatest pre- 
cision. And if the tree is not too lofty, one can satisfy 
himself that a party of foragers, which have climbed the tree, 
oceupies itself wholly in the labor of cutting them off, while ; 
at the foot are the carriers which make the journeys between | 
the tree and the nest. This management, which indicates 
among these insects a rare degree of intelligence, is perhaps 
not a constant and invariable practice, but it is an incontest- 
ible fact, and one which can be constantly proved. a 
“The part of the inhabitants which may be called the work- f 
ers, is composed of wingless individuals of quite variable size. — 
The largest (workers majores of Smith) are distinguished _ 
from the others at first sight by the great enlargement of — 
the head, and the presence of a single ocellus upon the face. — 
Some travellers have attributed to these grosses-tétes, a SU 
perior share of intelligence, and represent them as exercising — 
a kind of surveillance over the other members of the com- ; 
munity. I avow that I cannot come to a like conclusion, 
for I have always seen them devote themselves to the same * 
_ labors of cutting off and transporting the leaves, etc., and 
this without indicating a higher development of instinct in” 
any way. Probably their special role, if they have one, is | 
borne in the excavation of the nest and in tunnelling the gal- 
leries, labors which demand a superior strength and better 
implements. 
“The nest of Gicodoma serves as a habitation for many 
parasitic lodgers: some serpents, and particularly certaiti 
insects, which there undergo their metamorphoses. dig- 
ging up their nests in the spring, one never fails to find 
there some large species of Scarabæides. One also very o! 
sees a great number of males of a wasp, Flis costalis Lep-s 



’ int ing questi hich I have not yet had an opport 
to solve, the females of Elis deposit their eggs in the bodies of the larve of Scarab 
At Tehuacan (Dep't of Puebla) where the Scolia Azteca Sauss. is very common, it 
Particularly abundant in the leather tanneries, which leads me to think that the fema 
also deposit their eggs under the epidermis of the larvæ which ab 
