12 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



G. pectenalcedla. N. sp. 



The ground color appears to be pale yellowish, but it is almost entirely- 

 obscured by dense fuscous dusting and fuscous spots ; apex of the 

 primaries more deeply fuscous ; head a little iridescent ; antennae 

 annulate with sordid yellowish. Al. ex. iV inch. Season, September. 



(To be Continued.) 



THE MEXICAN HONEY ANT. 

 ( ' Myrmecocystus Mexicanus. ) 



BY THE EDITOR. 



During the summer of 1873 we received from an esteemed corre- 

 spondent, Mr. Jacob Krummeck, residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 

 several packages of this most curious insect, accompanied by letters 

 giving interesting details of their habits and of the uses to which the 



Fig. 1. 



^ 







honey they secrete is put. In fig. 1 our readers will find excellent figures 

 of a worker, a honey secreter and cocoons, commonly known as eggs, 

 drawn by Miss Peart, of Philadelphia. At the meeting of the American 

 Pharmaceutical Association, held in Baltimore in 1873, we presented a 

 paper on this insect, from which we quote the following : 



Very little can be found in Entomological works relating to this 

 insect. Some thirty years ago, a Belgian naturalist, M. Wesmael, received 

 specimens from a party travelling in Mexico, and published some obser- 

 vations on it in the fifth volume of the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of 

 Brussels, giving it the name of Myrmecocystus Mexicanus. The discoverer 

 found them very common near the town of Dolores, where they were 

 known under the native name of Busileras. He states that they live in 

 underground nests, which are not distinguishable from without. In early 

 life none of these insects present any unusual distension of the body, but 

 when arrived at a certain period of maturity some individuals begin to 



