26 PKOCEEDIlSuS OF THE NATIONAL. MUSEUM. vol.64, 



SYNTERMES EMERSONI, new species. 



Soldier (pi. 4, fig. 20). — Head light castaneous-brown, more red- 

 dish at front, shining, broadest at base, narrowed anteriorly, flatly 

 arched, with scattered fairly long hairs, fewer hairs than in S. dims 

 (Klug) Burmeister -" or chaquimayensis Holmgren. 



Fontanelle opening projected into a short tube, near front of 

 head. Post-clypeus short, not raised up as in dims. Labrum 

 piceous, short and broad, 3-lobed at apex; center lobe dark, usually 

 hyaline (possibly due to age of pinned specimen). 



Mandibles shining, piceous, with stout reddish-brown base, broad 

 at base where there are a few long hairs, incurved and pointed at 

 apex, with marginal teeth as in figure. The first marginal tooth 

 on the left mandible is nearer to the tip than in dirusf^ close to 

 chaquimayensis but longer and more slender, in the latter species 

 the marginal teeth are nearly opposite. 



Antennae reddish-brown, broken (9 segments remaining), with 

 pubescence; third segment very long, longer than second or fourth 

 (dividing?) ; fourth shorter than second, subclavate; fifth shorter than 

 third, but longer than fourth; segments become longer after the 

 fifth. 



Pronotum yellow-brown, saddle-shaped (smaller in dims, as is 

 the pronotum in grandis), very slightly emarginate anteriorly, if 

 emarginate, the lateral spines are shorter than in dims, as they are 

 in grandis. Meso- and metanota also with lateral spines. 



Legs yellow-brown, elongate; tibiae darker, apical spines red- 

 brown. 



Abdomen light castaneous-brown, densely covered with long hairs. 



The soldier of S. emersoni was compared with a paratype? (type) 

 of dims, collected by Winthem in Brazil, No. 204, Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass.; with specimens of dims collected 

 by Emerson at Kartabo, British Guiana, which are larger than the 

 type; and also with specimens of chaquimayensis collected by Bradley 

 at Perene, Peru, and others collected by Mann at Huachi, Bolivia. 

 Comparison was also made with a soldier of grandis Rambur, " coll. 

 Rbr. Patria?," and larger specimens of grandis collected by the 

 Thayer Expedition at Santarem and Tapajos Rivers in the collection 

 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 



In the paratype of dims the head is hairy and the marginal tooth 

 in the middle of the left mandible does not project much if any beyond 

 the inner margin of the mandible ; the marginal tooth said (in Hagen's 

 redescription) to be at the base of the right mandible is not visible in the 

 type; that is, the mandibles are similar to those of silvestri Holmgren. 



-0 The species should be credited to Burmeister; Klug was curator of the Berlin Museum and his was 

 merely a manuscript name without a description. 



" The shape and position of the marginal teeth on the mandibles in the genus Syntcrmes are good specific 

 characters. 



