344 
Psyche 
[December 
ently this specimen has not been studied by Brown himself, but by 
Wilson . . He adduces other circumstantial evidence to conclude 
that the Albanian specimen is really P. melinum. But Baroni Urbani 
never called for a loan of the specimen in question, which resides in 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and if 
he had done so, he would have been forced to conclude, as I was 
originally (Brown, 1958:334) after my own personal study of the same 
example, that the Tirana specimen is morphologically P. numidicum, 
and not P. melinum. The two species are in fact members of different 
species-groups. At my request, in 1955 or 1956, E. O. Wilson did 
compare the Albanian specimen with a type of P. numidicum 
(Brown, 1974: 82) in the Emery Collection. This comparison was 
based on my previous suspicion that the Albanian specimen (then 
under my care in MCZ) belonged to numidicum. Since that time, 1 
have had ample opportunity to compare the relevant types directly 
with the Albanian specimen and to confirm once more my own 
opinion of its identity. Finzi’s old determination as " europaea ,” as 
well as Baroni Urbani’s conjecture, are both wrong. Unless the label 
data are in error, P. numidicum must be considered to occur in 
Balkan Europe. 
Egg Predation in Proceratium and some other ants 
The species of Proceratium are arthropod egg predators as far as is 
known. In Proceratium, P. silaceum has been observed feeding upon 
and storing eggs of spiders and (rarely) of another, unknown 
arthropod (Brown, 1958; the determination of P. silaceum was inad¬ 
vertently omitted from the field and artificial nest observations). 
Since then, I have observed P. pergandei in Mississippi feeding on 
and storing spider eggs in a rotten-wood nest in nature; P. microm- 
matum from rotten-wood colonies from Lancetilla, near Tela, Hon¬ 
duras, feeding on spider eggs of two different kinds offered in the 
artificial nest; and P. avium carrying and storing eggs resembling 
spider eggs in Mauritius (Brown, 1974). Tests by me with all these 
species in the artificial nest failed to elicit any attempt by the ants to 
feed on sugary food, eggs of one or two kinds of millipedes, and 
various insect parts, but I did once get two P. silaceum workers to 
feed on a small droplet of yolk from a fresh hen’s egg for periods of up 
to about 2 minutes at a time in the artificial nest. 
