I 
H VMENOP TER A. 635 
demonstrated by repeated experiments that in the case of 
our common carpenter-ant (Carnponotus pennsylvanicus) the 
former method is practised. But it is not improbable that 
with certain other species the latter method occurs. 
On many occasions we have found a queen of the car¬ 
penter-ant in a small cleared space beneath the bark of a 
dead tree or log. Some of these queens were alone ; others 
were accompanied either by eggs, larvae, or by small workers, 
On one occasion we collected several such queens and placed 
each with her eggs in a cell between plates of glass in an 
artificial ant’s rfest, and have thus watched the beginnings 
of colonies. A few eggs, from ten to fifteen, are laid at 
first; these soon hatch, and the larvae develop quite rapidly. 
A nest which on July 15th contained, besides the queen, 
only seven eggs, contained July 27th thirteen eggs, three 
larvae, and one cocoon; and on Aug. 14th there were six 
cocoons. In another nest, which on July 15th contained, 
besides the queen, only young larvae, the larvae began to 
spin cocoons on July 19th, and on Aug. 8th the workers 
began to emerge. On Aug. 16th the workers had begun to 
work, carrying the empty cocoons out of the nest, and on 
Aug. 20th the workers began to take into the nest dead flies 
that had been placed at the entrance. 
The most remarkable result of this experiment was the 
demonstration of the fact that from the time the queen forms 
her cell and begins to lay eggs to the time when a brood of 
workers is matured no food is taken into the nest. The cell 
is a closed one, and contains no store of food except what 
may be within the body of the queen. The queen does not 
leave the nest; and when we placed food within a nest the 
queen built a wall of earth about it, thus walling it out. 
To test this matter a queen was placed with some of her 
eggs in an empty vial, and Swiss muslin was tied over the 
mouth of it. Here, where the queen could not possibly 
obtain food, the larvae matured, spun cocoons, and adult 
workers emerged. The queen was often seen to apparently 
