16 
The queens are a little longer than the males and they can 
be distinguished from the latter before losing their wings by 
the length of ther abdomen and their reduced thorax. The 
thorax is intermediate in dimensions between that of the 
workers and that of the male. In general appearance the queen 
is much like an enlarged worker, the antennae being the same 
although the size of the thorax and abdomen is a useful distin¬ 
guishing feature. It is perhaps for this reason that I have as 
yet never been able to find a wingless fertilized queen. 
In December, January, and February it is quite common 
to see the males and females flying about in the neighbourhood 
of their nests. They do not go very far during their nuptial 
flights but the queens on alighting afterwards are sure to find 
foraging workers for the tending of their egrs and young. 
The male is in fact a very common insect at that time of the 
year during which our observations were made. One has only 
to examine a masonry wall of a certain height to see them at 
any moment in the morning and in buildings provided with 
such walls where a crowd congregates, as for instance in 
churches one can see them crawling on the white clothes of the 
worshippers and flying aimlessly or darting about. The virgin 
queens are not so commonly seen flying about but on examining 
nests the number of males and females seems to be very great, 
showing how richly these insects are provided by nature to 
propagate and multiply. I was a long time before I was able 
to find the winged insects and the fertilized queens as they are 
never to be found in the foraging trail of the workers. The best 
chance of seeing them is to disturb a nest in a sugar cane field 
where under almost every dry sheathing leaf still attached to 
the stem a colony is to be found. These sugar cane leaves on 
being rapidly detached can be shaken into the mouth of a kill¬ 
ing bottle and a large collection of ants in all stages of growth 
and metamorphosis can thus be obtained in a short time. The 
same colony can of course be procured inside the sheathing 
leaver of bananas, coconuts and other palms &c., which form 
quite as good a breeding place but there is a great difficulty in 
han -ling such large leaves on the top of a killing bottle with- 
ou • st of the winged insects and workers escaping. 
Sublimate solutions may be found useful in houses but 
they are of no use whatever in the field, simply because they 
serve to drive away the foraging ants and not to destroy the 
egg laying insects. The nests have to be destroyed by spraying 
with soda resin solution whenever found in the abovementioned 
locations and in trap boxes containing straw laid open the con¬ 
tents of which are periodically burnt with all forms of the 
insect. "While destroying the natural or artificial nest in 
places, it is important that the ants should not be allowed to 
crawl up trees where they could take refuge and form new 
nests. And with this end in view tanglefoot such as adhesite 
(R. 1 per kilo) used on paper bands is very good. 
The question of establishing trap boxes for insect destruc¬ 
tion has also been found very useful in the campaign against 
the Rhinoceros beetle in Samoa. Trapping is done by means 
of especially prepared heaps of decaying vegetable refuse. The 
beetle lays its eggs in the trap and the larvae are subsequently 
collected and destroyed or inoculated with a contagious disease. 
The traps are four feet square and are composed of logs of 
coconut stem or of a stone wall 14 inches high ; they are 
excavated about four inches in the ground. The interior of 
this enclosure is filled with decaying pieces of coconut stems, 
dung dead wood, plaintain stems, sugarcane, megass kept damp 
and covered thinly with soil. In Seychelles where the rhinoceros 
beetle sets back considerably the growth of the young coconut 
trees, these traps should prove useful. All palm besides the 
coconut are attacked except, Areca nut, Cyrtostachys, 
Hyopliorbe, Caryota urens, ehrysalydocarpus and various 
species of Arenga. The coco-de-mer is fortunately seldom 
attacked. Livistonas, verschaffelta, oreodoxa and Deckenia are 
the favourite food plants. 
It may not be out of the place here to mention that Anatto 
seeds (Bixa orellana) when half ripe are used in houses as a 
repellent against bed bugs besides giving a fine red appearance 
to the floors. 
