No. 3. — The Ants of Borneo. 



By William Morton Wheeler. 



contributions from the entomological laboratory of the 

 bussey institution of harvard university, no. 145. 



During the past decade several collections of Bornean ants have 

 been sent me for study and identification. Mr. John Hewitt sent an 

 interesting lot of specimens accumulated diu-ing his residence in Kuch- 

 ing and Prof. Harrison W. Smith, of the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, made a collection in the same locality for the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology. He also contributed a number of specimens 

 collected in British North Borneo by Mr. E. B. Kershaw, a clever 

 young naturalist who lost his life in that country in a forest fire. Prof. 

 Roland Thaxter of Harvard University gave me a number of small 

 species from Sarawak, and Mr. Horace Donisthorpe kindly sent 

 several that had been taken by Mr. G. E. Bryant on Mt. Matang, 

 near Kuching. Recently a few additional specimens were received 

 from Mr. William Beebe, of the New York Zoological Park. 



While working up this material I found it necessary to prepare a 

 complete list of the known Bornean Formicidae with their more 

 important synonjTtiy and distribution. During recent years less 

 attention has been bestowed on the ants of Borneo than on those of 

 Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Burmah, and India. The 

 Bornean fauna has, however, considerable historical interest to the 

 taxonomist, because it has been studied by all the leading myrme- 

 cologists, Smith, Mayr, Ernest Andre, Emery, and Forel, and because 

 the researches of several of these investigators were based on material 

 secured by such well-known collectors and explorers as Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, Doria, Beccari, Bedot, Pictet, and Chaper. Thus Borneo 

 has come to be the type-locality for many interesting species later 

 found to have a wade distribution in Indonesia. The material sent 

 me by Hewitt and Harrison W. Smith is valuable because it was 

 taken in the very localities in which Wallace collected. Professor 

 Smith has given me the following notes in regard to some of these: 



" Seravihu is the little mountain a few miles up country from 

 Kuching, on the Sarawak River, where the first Rajah had his bunga- 



