SHORT NOTES. 285 



edges of the leaves together with their jaws, each ant 

 thus acting as an animated clamp ■ then come other ants 

 every one holding in its mandibles a larva, the mouth of which 

 is applied first to one edge of the leaf and then to the other ; 

 as a filament of slightly glutinous silk is being constantly 

 emitted by the larva, a fine silken web is soon woven by the 

 to and fro movements imparted to it by its bearer the worker 

 ant and the breach in the nest is quickly repaired; the "ani- 

 mated clamps " relax their hold as soon as their need is past. 

 Inasmuch as the worker ant is itself incapable of supplying 

 silk, there seems no doubt but that all the silk of the nest is 

 provided by the larvae. The same habit has been recorded 

 for another species of the same genus, viz. Oe. loncjinoda of the 

 Upper Congo and for Camponotus senex of Brazil. 



In Notes from the Leyden Museum vol. xxv.. 1905. 

 Father E. Wasman records the observations of Herr Edu. 

 Jacobson at Semarang in Java on the ant Polyrhachis dives. 

 The nest is constructed between the leaves of a tree alluded 

 to as the Japanese palm ; the leaves are bound together by 

 silk and the interior of the nest is lined with silk in which are 

 entangled chips of bark, wood and fragments of dead leaves ; 

 the nest in divided into chambers by partitions of semitrans- 

 parent silk. Jacobson noted that the nest which he had 

 under observation was broken at one point and that the 

 breach was repaired by the same method as that employed by 

 Oe. smaragdina, the larvae held in the jaws of the workers 

 being used to spin a silken web across the rent in the nest. 

 A good many species of Polyrhachis employ silk in the manu- 

 facture of their nests and it would not be surprising to learn 

 that this habit of the workers of employing the larvae as 

 spinning machines is more general than has been hitherto 

 suspected. 



R. Shelford. 



Malayan Musical Instruments. 



In "Fasciculi Malayenses " Pt. II (a) Anthropology, of 

 which a notice is given in "Man" 1904, there is a 



R. A. Soc. No. 45, 1905 



