1008 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXV. 
of its life history. There is some excuse, therefore, for pub- 
lishing these fragmentary observations. 
On October 27 of last year I made a short excursion to 
Mt. Barker, which is hardly more than an hour's walk from 
the university at Austin, Texas. The woods about the base and 
on the slopes of the elevation are favorite nesting grounds for 
the large black ponerine ant, Pachycondyla harpax. In Octo- 
ber this ant is rearing its second brood of larvz and pupa, hav- 
ing completed the education of its first brood during June and 
July. Wishing to continue some observations on the habits 
of Pachycondyla, I dug up one of the largest nests I could find 
and carried it home in a bag. On transferring it to a Lubbock 
nest I took the census of the colony and found it to comprise 
25 worker ants,.13 cocoons, 8 mature larve, 7 immature larvae, 
and a packet of eggs. While counting the larvae, which are 
shaped like the well-known cucurbitaceous product known as 
the ** crook-necked squash," and covered with hairy tubercles, 
I noticed that six of the largest and one of the smallest pre- 
sented an unusual appearance. Each of these seemed to wear 
about its neck a huge collar, —a sort of Elizabethan ruff, — 
consisting of a curled larva. That this could not be another 
ant-larva was apparent from a moment's examination. In all 
cases it almost completely encircled the ant-larva in the region 
of the first abdominal, or in some cases the metathoracic, seg- 
ment. The posterior end was provided with a sort of disk, 
which adhered so tightly that both larvae could be killed in 
alcohol without separating. The collar-like larva was broad 
behind the middle, but tapered anteriorly to a very slender 
thoracic region and head provided with small jaws. These 
were supported by a chitinous frame-work of such character- 
istic structure as to show that the adult form must be a true 
dipteron fly. The very smooth and tense integument, which 
was armed with some short, hooked bristles, was very trans- 
parent, so that the peristaltic movements of the viscera were 
clearly visible. One of the adult Pachycondyla larvze with its 
living collar is shown in Fig. 1. 
! For an account of the habits of this ant, see my paper, A Study of Some 
Texan Ponerinz, Biol. Bull., vol. ii, No. 1 (Oct., 1900), pp. 1-31, Figs. 1-10. 
