THE HISTORY OI ; MYRMECOLOGY. 127 



system of the European species, but they have published excellent 

 monographs and revisions of the faunas of other continents, so that 

 the student of today finds it a comparatively easy task to continue the 

 work. 



Although the ant-fauna of North America is vastly richer than that 

 of Europe, few of our entomologists have cared to study its tax- 

 onomy and as a rule these few have been 

 poorly prepared to undertake the work. 

 Species have been described by Buckley, 

 Cresson,- Fitch, Haldeman, McCook, Norton, 

 Pergande, Provancher, Scudder. Yiereck 

 and Walsh, but the really valuable work FIG. -i. Worker of Stc- 



on our fauna has been accomplished by rcon, y rme.r homi of Ceylon. 



AT T7 1 T- 1 (Bmgham.) 



Mayr, Emery and rorel. 



The study of ant ethology has had a more continuous, though per- 

 haps slower, development than the taxonomy. It is also much older, 

 and may be said to date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies, to authors like Wilder ( 1615) Bonnet ( i779-'83), Swammerdarri 

 (1682), Leuwenhoeck (1695), Gould (1747), De Geer (1778) and 

 Christ (1791). The subject does not begin to assume definite form, 

 however, till we reach the writings of Latreille (1802) and especially 

 of Pierre, the son of the celebrated Francois Huber. P. Huber's work 

 entitled " Recherches sur les Aloeurs des Fourmis Indigenes " published 

 in 1810, is perhaps the most remarkable of all works on the habits of 

 ants. It has been widely quoted and has never ceased to be an inspira- 

 tion to all subsequent workers. It covers much of the subject of the 

 habits of ants in an attractive and luminous style and abounds in accu- 

 rate and original observations. The most interesting portions of the 

 work treat of the slave-making habits of the sanguinary ant (Formica 

 sangmnea) and the amazon (Polycryits nifcscctis). Huber was not 

 only the first to discover and interpret the symbiotic relations of these 

 species but his account is so complete that even Forel could add to it 

 little that was really new. Huber also observed the relations of the 

 ants to the aphicls and of the various castes to one another and correctly 

 interpreted the origin of colonies. 



Since the publication of Huber's work the habits of ants have been 

 studied by an ever increasing number of investigators. The most com- 

 prehensive contributions have been made by Forel and Emery, but 

 important work has been done by Adlerz, Ernest Andre, Bates, Belt, 

 Bethe, Brauns, von Buttel Reepen, Ebrard, Escherich, Goeldi, Heer. 

 J. Huber, von Ihering, Janet, Karawaiew, Lameere, Lespes, Lubbock. 

 Mayr, Moggridge, Reichenbach, Renter, Rothney, Santschi, Syke>. 



