1 68 



ANTS. 



be noted that all the palearetic genera enumerated for the Sicilian 

 amber are also common to the paleotropical fauna of the present day. 

 This will explain the following quotation from Emery (i893-'94) : " My 

 -Indies tin the ants of thr Sicilian amber have demonstrated that at the 

 beginning of thr Tertiary. Europe had an ant-fauna of Indoaustralian 

 character, still living and exclusively of this character in Sicily during 



the formation of the amber; while to 

 the north of the sea which at that time 

 extended across Europe, representatives 

 of this fauna, mingled with Formica, 

 Myrmica and other recent holarctic types, 

 lived in the forests of the Samland. 

 After the disappearance of this sea the 

 northern fauna pushed its way south- 

 ward as far as the Mediterranean. Then 

 came the Glacial epoch, which extin- 

 guished the Indian fauna in the north 

 and drove its feeble remnants, mingled 

 with arctic forms to the warmer locali- 

 ties of southern Europe. From these re- 

 gions the present ant- fauna wandered 

 back, with the disappearance of the ice, 

 into the middle and northern portions of 

 the continent. But the tropical forms 

 had difficulty in returning, because the 

 Mediterranean, the African deserts and 

 the steppes to the eastward were so many 

 barriers to their progress. The Euro- 

 pean ant-fauna therefore remains com- 

 paratively poor." 



The mixture of arctic and tropical forms in the amber, a peculiarity 

 which characterizes the other insects and the plants no less than the 

 Formicidse, has not been satisfactorily explained. Heer endeavored to 

 account for it on the following assumption : " It is probable that the 

 succiniferous forests also covered Scandinavia and that the conifers 

 were able to grow even on the high mountains. As the amber region 

 extended from Scandinavia to Germany, where a sea separated it from 

 the remainder of the Germanic continent, we may see in this natural 

 barrier the cause of the peculiar fades of the amber flora. It pre- 

 sents to our view the Scandinavian type of the Tertiary, mixed, in all 

 probability, with a mountain or subalpine type. It is, in fact, con- 

 ceivable that the plants and animals, embalmed as thev were in their 



FIG. 96. A, Female of Hy- 

 popomyrmex bombiccii, a singu- 

 lar Myrmicine ant from the 

 Sicilian Amber. (Emery.) b, 

 Side of head, showing eye and 

 antenna more enlarged. 



