Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/35

 minute, shining-brown beetle moving about among the seeds. These little creatures were themselves not unlike some very small seeds, and were of an elliptic form, measuring a trifle less than one line in length. They proved to belong to the scarce and very restricted genus Coluocera. This species, named by Kraatz C. attæ, on account of its inhabiting the nests of ants belonging to the genus Atta, has been found in Greece.

Mr. Bates, in his most interesting account of his travels on the Amazons, remarks upon the singular fact, of which the above instance is an example: "that some of the most anomalous forms of Coleopterous insects are those which live solely in the nests of ants," and he then goes on to allude to the strange snake Amphisbæna, a native of that region, which also lives in the nests of the Sauba ants (Œcodoma cephalotes), observing how curious it is that an abnormal form of snakes should be found in the society of these insects. He is of opinion, however, that the Amphisbæna is not an inoffensive guest, but lives upon the ants whose nest it selects for its home.

Another remarkable inhabitant of ants' nests is a minute cricket, of which I found a single example in the midst of a colony of black ants at Mentone in February, 1874. This miniature cricket is scarcely as large as a grain of wheat, the body, excluding the antennæ and other appendages, measuring only two lines in length. It has been described by Dr. Paolo