100 
Psyche 
[December 
no reason to suppose that such a view can be maintained. 
From what we know of the Attine ants there is abundant 
evidence to show that the fungus feeders permit only the 
food fungus to develop in the nest. Moreover, while the full 
development of the mycelia of such a fungus is usually re- 
stricted to the actual garden, fragments of the hyphse are 
widely dispersed throughout the nest because they adhere to 
the bodies of insects which tend them. From what has been 
said above it is obvious that the conditions in the artificial 
nest were favorable to the growth of fungi. If the ants had 
been cultivating a food fungus it is scarcely thinkable that it 
should have failed to develop while two foreign fungi grew 
well. 
It may further be objected that Kennedy and Schramm 
applied their postulate to a member of the subgenus 
Cephaloxys while my observations were made upon a species 
belonging to the subgenus Strumigenys. I am ready to agree 
that the habits of the two groups may differ but I would 
incline to the view that of the two Cephaloxys might be 
expected to show more nearly general feeding habits than 
Strumigenys. The mandibles of most species of Cephaloxys 
are far less aberrant than those of Strumigenys and, in addi- 
tion, the workers of Cephaloxys forage outside the nest in a 
perfectly normal manner. I have been able to observe this 
forraging in the case of three species of Cephaloxys and do 
not doubt that the other members of the group behave in 
a similar fashion. On the other hand I have never seen a 
worker of the subgenus Strumigenys outside the nest al- 
though I have taken these insects in several localities. There 
is, perhaps, little need for such elaborate refutation when it 
can be stated that the members of the captive colony readily 
fed on the tissues of other insects or, when these were not 
available, on a mixture of egg yolk and sugar. They refused 
sugary foods containing little protein. Indeed they were the 
first ants which I have ever known to reject a diet of bananas. 
With these observations in mind it seems to me that one 
cannot escape the conclusion that under natural conditions 
Strumigenys is insectivorous . 1 
After this article had gone to press the author received from 
Mr. L. G. Wesson, Jr., a most interesting paper describing his studies 
on the feeding habits of Strumigenys pergandei. (Entomological News, 
