62 
Psyche 
[June 
to the process it is possible to follow the passages to 
their ends. There are usually not more than three or 
four of them and the length of any passage seldom exceeds 
five inches. The soil brought to the surface by the ants 
is usually very fine and the crater formed from it is 
easily dispersed by rain or wind, hence many nests are 
without a crater much of the time. Most of the craters 
measured by the writer were 2% inches or less in diameter. 
There are seldom more than 75 workers in a nest. The 
average number seems to be about 50. The workers store 
both seeds and the remains of other insects, especially 
other ants. In view of the lack of pugnacity of our species 
of Ephebomyrmex it seems safe to assume that such 
stores of insect remains are secured by scavenging rather 
than by attacks on living victims. Seeds are stored un- 
hulled and several sorts are accepted. One colony kept 
in an artificial nest preferred white clover seed to grass 
seed. The slow hulling of the seeds prevents the forma- 
tion of a chaff pile for the hulls, which are discarded out- 
side the nest entrance, are dispersed before they can 
accumulate into a chaff pile. 
As Wheeler noted, it is unusually difficult to secure sex- 
ual forms. Since he observed a marriage flight of imber- 
biculus near Deming, New Mexico, on July 12th (13), 
and since the writer secured a colony of imberbiculus 
containing callow males and females in the Davis Moun- 
tains of Texas on May 25th, it might be expected that 
alates would ordinarily be present in the nests of this 
species during the month of June. Actually this is seldom 
the case and as imberbiculus, like many xerophilous ants in 
the southwest, apparently holds its marriage flight shortly 
after the onset of the summer rains in early July, the 
absence of alates in many nests during the month of 
June may mean that imberbiculus produces sexual brood 
only in especially favorable years. The pupal males and 
females show a surprising capacity for moving their ap- 
pendages prior to transformation. The workers fail to 
remove all of the pupal exuviae from the alates when 
the latter transform, and the patches of pupal casing 
