workers are busy preparing subterranean passages backwards for eventual flight. Generally such passages are already made, and during a fight a new dome of the _Lasius_ may be seen rising at a distance, it not being difficult for them to make this with the help of their extended subterranean passages and communications. The _F. exsecta_ or _pressilabris_ fights in a peculiar way, which is due to care of their small and very tender bodies. It avoids all single combats, and always fights in closed ranks. Only when it thinks victory secure does it spring on its enemy's back. But its chief strength lies in the fact that many together always attack a foe. They nail down their opponent by seizing its legs and holding them firmly to the ground, while a comrade springs on the back of the defenceless creature and tries to bite through its neck. But if threatened the holders sometimes take flight, and so it happens that in battles between the _exsectæ_ and the much stronger _pratenses_ not a few of the latter are seen running about with a small enemy clutching their shoulders, and making violent efforts to tear the neck of its foe. If the bearer is then seized with cramp, the nervous cord has been injured. On the other hand, if an _exsecta_ is seized by the back by a _pratensis_ it is at once lost. The tactics of the turf ants resemble those of the _exsectæ_, three or four of them seizing an opponent and pulling off his legs. In similar fashion the attack of the _Lasius_ species is chiefly directed against the legs of its enemies, three, four, or five uniting in the effort. They understand barricade fighting particularly well in their large well-built dwellings, and if it comes to the worst fly by subterranean passages. They are feared by most ants on account of their numerical superiority. Forel one day poured the contents of ten nests of _pratenses_ in front of a tree trunk inhabited by _Lasius fuliginosus_ (jet ant). The siege at once began; but the jet ants called in help from the nests connected with their colony, and thick black columns were at once seen coming out from the surrounding trees. The _pratenses_ were obliged to fly, and left behind them a mass of dead as well as their pupæ, which last were carried off by the victors to their nests to be eaten. Battles, however, are not confined to species of ants having warlike and slave-making habits. The agricultural ants likewise at times wage fierce wars with one another. The importance of seeds to these ants, and the consequent value which they set upon them, induce the animals, when supplies are scarce, to plunder each other's nests. Thus Moggridge says,--