540 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



Body shining, very finely reticulate-striolate or shagreened and 

 very sparsely and finely punctate. Mandibles finely striate. 



Pubescence scarcely visible, extremely short and sparse; hairs erect, 

 rather abundant, white and delicate; gula with long hairs. Legs 

 with somewhat oblique, sparse pubescence. Anterior surface of 

 antennal scapes covered with numerous short, erect hairs. 



Yellowish brown; antennae and legs paler; gaster and posterodorsal 

 portion of head darker brown. 



Type locality. — South Dakota: Hill City (Th. Pergande). 



Colorado: Manitou (Wheeler). 



Massachusetts: Wellesley (A. P. Morse); Amherst (Amherst 

 College Coll.). 



Professor Emery has very generously giA^en me one of the three 

 CO types of this ant, which he described in 1893 as a distinct species. 

 This specimen agrees well with the material from Massachusetts 

 except that the latter is somewhat darker in color. As Professor 

 Emery has also sent me cotypes of his lasioides var. j^icea (vctula) 

 and his neogagates, I am able, with the aid of the large amount of 

 material in my collection, to form a definite opinion on the status of 

 these various forms and their relations to one another. Both the 

 typical lasioides and its var. jncea were based on small workers and 

 this evidently led Emery to regard them as representatives of a dis- 

 tinct species. Long series of specimens, however, collected from many 

 localities, show that they differ from the typical neogagates and its 

 var. morhida merely in having erect hairs on the antennal scapes. 

 The differences mentioned by Emery in the length of the scapes and 

 tibiae are, in my opinion, slight and inconstant. 



121. F. (P.) NEOGAGATES LASIOIDES var. VETULA Whceler. 



F. lasioides var. picea Emery, Zool. jahrb. Syst., 1895, 8, p. 335, ^ ; Wheeler, 



Ants, 1910, p. 571. 

 F.fusca subpolita var. picea Wheeler, Occas. papers Bost. soc. nat. hist., 1906, 



7, no. 7, p. 21. 

 F. lasioides var. vetula, nom. nov. Wheeler, Psj^che, 1912, 19, p. 90. 



Worker. Length 2.5-5.5 mm. 



Resembling the worker of the typical neogagates in size, color (even 

 to the variations of color), sculpture and pilosity, and differing only 

 in having delicate, short, erect, white hairs on the anterior surface 

 of the antennal scapes as in the typical lasioides. 



Female. Length 6-8 mm. 



