THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
*1 1 O 
1 Id 
I have never found the Histers in any of then 
preparatory stages, but having occasionally come 
the ants disappear from under the stones when 
the hot weather sets in, and retire to cooler 
places, it is useless to look for their attendant 
Coleoptera between May and October. 1 have, 
it is true, found thriving nests of Aphcenogaster 
testaceo-pilosa, full of “ brood " as early as 
October 27th, but have not met with any Histers 
before November 17th: the latest date on which 
they have occurred to me is May 14th, when I 
found one or two S. archnoides with very ma- 
ture pupae of the ant; the soil (at Tangier) 
being then baked almost as hard as a brick by 
the sun. February and March appear to be the 
months in which they may be looked for with 
the greatest prospect of success. 
The search for ant 5 s : nest Hister entails no 
small amount of patience and exertion, as I do 
not think that more than two or three per cent, 
of the ant’s-nest contain them, and the stones 
(which it is as well invariably to turn as gently 
as possible, and to carefully replace after inves- 
tigation) are often of great size and weight. 
Still, it is a pretty sight, and one which com- 
pensates for a great deal of strain to the eyes, 
as well as to the back, to see a Sternoccelis or 
Eretmotus lying motionless among the hurrying 
crowd of ants, and then suddenly developing an 
amount of leg quite surprising in so small a crea- 
ture, marching off daintily on the tips of its 
toes (or rather tarsi) with a ludicrous resemblance, 
in its gait and appearance, to a tiny crab. As 
Mr. Lewis suggests (l. c., p. 291) the ants ap- 
pear to regard these intruders with a certain 
amount of philosophic indifference, as “an evil 
which they are. unable to divert : ” their compara- 
tively weak mandibles being ineffective against 
the hard armour and tightly packed limbs of 
the beetles, which devour the helpless brood with 
impunity. I have more than once taken S. 
acutangulus with a half-eaten larva in its jaws, 
and they are usually to be found clinging to the 
masses of larvse where these lie thickest. On 
the other hand, I once (but once only) saw an 
ant take up a S. arachnoides in its mandibles 
and carry it off into a lower gallery of the nest, 
but this may have been done under the influence 
of alarm, the frightened ant seizing on the first 
object that came in its way. 
across somewhat immature specimens of S. acu- 
tangulus in the ant’s-nest, I am inci ned to the 
'*idea that the larvae, like the perfect insects, will 
eventually be found there. The beetles usually 
occur singly, or at most two or three in one nest, 
but, occasionally, several species are found toge- 
ther. Thus, on December 28th 1888, 1 found, in a 
not very populous colony of ants, three S, acutan- 
gulus , one S. arachnoides , and four Eretmotus tan- 
gerianus — in all eight specimens. I have also 
taken half a dozen S. arachnoides from a single 
nest, this species-, being apparently (as Mr. Lewis 
has also observed) more gregarious in its habits 
than the others, 
( To he continued . ) 
The Latest Theory of Volcanoes 
Through the courtesy of Mr. 0. W. Jeffs the 
Secretary of the Geological Photographs Com- 
mittee of the British Association we are enabled 
to give our readers the following details of a p&pc . 
entitled “The Volcanoes of Southern Italy: : a. 
a note on the latest theory of Volcanic Action/'' 
which he read before the Chester Society of Na- 
tural Science. 
The first part of the paper was chiefly occu r , 
by a description of a series of photographs illustra- 
ting the craters and lava streams of ' - ■ 
Stromboli, Etna, and Vuieano These • • 
taken last year (shortly before the recent err 
of Vulcano) by Dr. Tempest Anderson, of o 
were shown by him at the British As sc 
Bath last September. Amongst these were u • 
taneous pictures of the craters of Vesuviu 
Yucano during eruption, that showed very \Jv 
the discharge of steam and showering of as 
which usually takes place. The ruined te: wd 
Serapis, with its columns, nude fameu 
observations of Sir Charles Lye.il, ..a u u 
in his classical work, “ The Principles of < .. 
was also shown. After conducting Id ■ 
through an imaginary town in Southern Tnd; 
the less known region of the Lipari Islands J \ 
Jeffs devoted the remainder of his paper to a 
discussion on th« main elements of volcanic acuon 
