THE HISTORY OF MYRMECOLOGY. 



'33 



development and habits of its species are so imperfectly known that 

 its exact position cannot be determined at the present time. I have 

 followed Forel in placing it with the Ponerinae though I appreciate 

 Emery's reasons for dissenting from this procedure. 1 Some of the 

 tribes, especially the Ponerii and Myrmicii still embrace very hetero- 

 geneous groups of genera, and many of the genera, especially those 

 which are known only from specimens of a single caste, are probably 



FIG. 78. 



a 



Cryptocerus angr.losus of Central America. (Original.) 

 b, worker ; r, head of soldier from above. 



a, Soldier; 



placed in the wrong tribes. Ashmead ( 1905^) recently undertook to 

 construct a new arrangement of the genera, but as Emery has shown 

 (19060), it is anything but an improvement on the existing classifica- 

 tion. What we need for the present as not a new arrangement, the 

 erection of a lot of new genera on superficially aberrant species and the 

 raising of every subgenus to generic rank, but a painstaking study of 

 all the species in the existing groups. Until such studies have made 

 appreciable headway, the existing avowedly imperfect classification 

 should not be discarded without at least as much thought as has been 

 devoted to its construction. 



1 Since these remarks were written, Emery (Dcutsch. Ent. Zcitsch., 1909. 

 P- 355) has changed his views on the position of the Cerapachysii. He now 

 places them under the new caption Prodorylinse, but within the subfamily 

 Ponerinae. 



