15 
are infested and if no measures are taken to stop the propaga¬ 
tion of ants carried in supplies purchased from shops it will not 
he long before the insect has invaded the whole archipelago as 
there is no climatic factor which can hinder its normal spread. 
It is however fortunate that so far none of them have spread 
and become a nuisance above 1,500 feet elevation and it is pro¬ 
posed to ascertain if their 11011 -occurrence above this altitude is 
a question of climate or whether parasites there exist which 
effect then- destruction. 
The ants are principally troublesome owing to their pro¬ 
tecting countless numbers of scale insects. The following are 
the scale insects with which they live in association : 
1. Icerya Seychellarum 
2. Lecanium tessellatum 
3. „ longulum 
4. ,, frontale 
5. ,, viride 
6. Dactylopius citri 
7. ,, virgatus 
8. Asterolecanium epidendri 
9. Pulvinaria psidii 
10. „ Antigonii 
11. Vinsonia stellifera 
12. Aspidiotus ficus 
They seem not to care in the same degree for: 
1. Chionaspis inday 
2. Hemichionaspis minor 
3. ,, aspidistrae 
4. Diaspis pentagona 
5. Mytilaspis auriculata 
6. Lecanium nigrum 
7. Asterolecanium bambusae 
•which are quite as common insects as those on the preceding 
list but they are strongly established on certain species of 
plants before the ants take any notice of them. 
The scale insects are protected from storms and ennemies 
by a sort of shelter built by the ants which make use for this 
purpose of soil or some light vegetable debris within their 
reach. One can understand how scale insects so eagerly pro¬ 
tected can multiply in their attack upon plants. I have not 
been able to find ants actually transporting eggs or young of 
scale insects ; the latter, provided with legs, are, it is true, so 
easily propagated from one plant to another by natural loco¬ 
motion and by the wind that no assistance on the part of the 
ants in this connection seems necessary. But the fact has, it 
appears, been recorded elsewhere. 
The ants have so far not been found to injure seeds, 
flowers, fruits, honey bees, eggs or chicken but they crawl upon 
all sorts of food on the table and this is enough to make them 
a great pest. There are other forms of injury for which they 
may in time be found responsible such as for example the 
destruction of other species of useful ants and the dissemina¬ 
tion of germs of contagious diseases. 
The worker is the smaller adult form (measuring 2 milli¬ 
metres) and its colour is jet black with the exception of the 
club-shaped antennae which possess a whitish tinge under a 
magnifying lens and of the joints of the legs and of the man¬ 
dibles which are yellowish. The antennae are composed of two 
joints which meet nearly at right angles and are of considerable 
length. The males are a little broader and longer (3m/m) than 
the workers and besides being provided with two pairs of wings 
they are easily distinguished from the queens, lo. by their 
large and deep thorax which equals the length of the abdomen, 
2o.. by the antennae which seem nearly always erect and not 
always forming an angle as is the case with the workers and 
queens. The antennae of the males are also shorter and not so 
club shaped as in other adults, 3o. by the shape of their 
abdomen which is distinctly shorter and slightly curved at the 
apex. 
