132 WILLIAM MORTON \YHKELER. 



Lasius from Illinois as L. latipes, and in 1903 McClendon and I 1 

 showed that this ant has two forms of females: the one described 

 by Walsh and characterized by extremely flat, dilated femora and 

 lilii.i-. >m. ill, feeble tarsi, strongly clavate antennal scapes, short 

 funicular joints and long, fulvous pilosity; and another of a 

 darker color, with less flattened legs, less clavate scapes, longer 

 funicular joints, longer tarsi and sparser, shorter pilosity. The 

 latter we designated as the a-, the former as the /3-female. We 

 found most colonies at the height of the breeding season to con- 

 tain only /3-females, but in three colonies from different localities 

 both forms occurred simultaneously. These observations sug- 

 gest that L. spathepus may be the /3-female of some Japanese 

 Lasius, which in its worker and male phases show's no departure 

 from the usual generic type of structure. Five Lasii are known 

 from Japan, namely, L. niger L., niger alienus Forster, myops 

 Forel, umbratus Nyl. and L. fuliginosus Latr. All of these are 

 well-known European species and, in all probability, common 

 also throughout temperate Asia. 2 The only one of these species 

 of which spathepus could be a /3-female is L. fuliginosus. I possess 

 males and workers of this species collected by Mr. Hans Sauter in 

 Kanagawa, Japan, and there were three workers in the collection 

 sent me by Professor Kuwana, but as these bear a special number 

 they were probably not taken in the nest containing the spathepus. 

 All the Japanese workers and males of fuliginosus are indistin- 

 guishable from specimens in my collection from several European 

 countries (England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and 

 Russia). In Europe, however, this ant is known to have only 

 one form of female, which is in no respect extraordinary (Fig. 2, A 

 and B) though it would bear to spathepus about the same relation 

 that the a-female of latipes bears to the cospecific /3-female. Com- 

 parison of the figures accompanying this article shows that the 

 head of spathepus in its outline is in some respects more like that 



'"Dimorphic Queens in an American Ant (Lasius talipes Walsh)," BIOL. BULL., 

 IV., No. 4. 1903. PP- 149-163. 



-L. fuliginosus is cited by Forel from lower altitudes in the Himalaya ("Les 

 Fourmis de 1'Himalaya," Hull. Soc. Vaitd. Sc. Nat., 5 ser., XLII., 1906, p. 85). 

 Du Buysson in a paper which I have not seen ("Les fourmis fuligineuses au Japon." 

 Rev. Ent., 1906, pp. 101-102) gives some notes on the occurrence of this ant in 

 Japan. 



