This curious parasite inhabits the nests, or, more strictly speaking, the bodies, of an ant, native to Texas, that has long been famous as a storer of grain, but whose supposed still further achievements in an agricultural direction would now seem open to doubt. In the nest of another American ant, which most certainly does grow mushrooms, the same observer found another “_myrmecophile_,” or ants’ nest insect, viz. a minute species of cockroach that lives its life amongst the caves and galleries of the great vegetable mass which forms, and is designed to form, the mushroom bed, upon the product of which it feeds. Here again the ants have become thoroughly reconciled to the presence amongst them of a guest from which, as far as can be seen, they derive no benefit, whilst having to submit to a loss, through its agency, of some part of the fruits of their labours. These little cockroaches are fairly numerous, and have become so adapted to living in darkness that their eyes have almost disappeared. Another loss, or partial loss, is of a more curious nature, and, one might think, would be a great privation to them. Their antennæ, namely, are always incomplete, but this does not seem to have come about by a gradual process of atrophy, but rather to have been caused by mutilation during their owners’ lifetime. But how has this happened, and what has been the mutilating agency? Professor Wheeler’s explanation, which he believes to be the only one, is that their antennæ have been unconsciously sheared off by the ants, whilst engaged either in clipping their mushrooms or in cutting up the pieces of leaves which they are continually bringing into the nest, to add to the bed on which they grow. “It is easy,” he says, “to understand how an insect like a cockroach, living in the midst of thousands of ants which are continually opening and closing their scissor-like mandibles, should be certain, sooner or later, to have its long antennæ cropped. One wonders how the tarsi (the legs, that is to say) of the cockroach escape the same treatment.”[15] This wonder, however, if there is really any reason for it, suggests a doubt as to the sufficiency of the explanation here offered. The antennæ, one would think, might be held high, in which case, if sheared at all, it could only be at the base, but if here (as would not, however, seem to be the case) why should not the legs be sheared too? Again, it seems possible that the insects themselves may be in the habit of gnawing one another’s antennæ. As the cockroaches live and flourish it would seem that this mutilation of their antennæ, if that, indeed, be the explanation, can do them no great injury. Yet these organs are supposed to be of great importance to insects, and, judging by their length and delicacy, one would think that they were especially so to the members of the cockroach family. In this case they would probably be extremely careful of them, and the fact that these