206 
Mr. G. A. James Rothnoy's 
tliousands, but as soon as the ant-rain from above 
ceased, no amount of persuasion or bullying could get 
a sound out of the crowds which were huddled together. 
As a check to any possible deafness on my part, I called 
in the assistance of a friend, not an entomologist, but a 
very keen observer (Mr. C. J. Barnes of Bombay), but 
he could not hear anything more than I did, and neither 
of us could detect anything beyond the pattering of 
ants on leaves, nest, or fence, and not a suspicion of a 
sound which could in any way be taken as independent 
and self-evolved. 
Cremastogaster of several species I met with in 
numbers during my tour, and never missed an oppor- 
tunity of experimenting, but without success; and the 
same with CEcophylla, disturb a nest o\'(JE. smaragdina and 
you will get the pattering, ^' red-hot cinder,^^ or water- 
boiled-over sound, but take a crowded mass of smarag^ 
dina on tree-trunk or ground, irritate them with a stick, 
they will immediately show fight and literally sit-up at you, 
but without the nest, which acts as a drum, no sound 
do they produce. 
Cremastogaster possesses stridulating apparatus, but 
CEcophylla, as Dr. Sharp points out, does not, yet the 
result is the same ; disturb a nest and you get sound ; 
disturb the ants without the nest, which acts as a drum, 
and you cannot. 
8ima nigra, Jerdon. 
The nest referred to in Notes on Indian Ants^' 
(Trans. Ent. Soc. iii., 1889), situated in the drive 
between Government House and the Outram Statue, 
Calcutta, I found in a most flourishing condition, and 
the number of ants apparently increased with the size 
of the tree, which was very considerable ; this is the 
second instance of a particular nest, well known to me 
from 1872 to 1886, found still strong and vigorous in 
1 894, or a continuous residence of twenty-two years. 
There was a nest of this species in the Victoria 
Gardens, Bombay, and present with the ants the 
mimicking Salticiis, exactly as on the Bengal side. 
8ima rufo-nigra, Jerdon. 
My two well-known nests (1872-1886) in Barrackpore 
Park were, in 1894, extinct. One tree had disappeared 
