258 WHEELER. 



lus which he observed at Mackay, Queensland.^ He noticed the 

 pecuhar position in which the gaster is carried by the foraging worker 

 and discovered that " certain workers in every nest have their abdomen 

 greatly distended by a sweet transparent fluid. These workers are 

 only found at the bottom of the nest, about two feet from the surface; 

 they can move about, but are not as active as the unaltered workers 

 and never leave the nest." Forel * says that Turner found this replete 

 condition of the gaster in L. varians Emery var. rufipes Emery at Mac- 

 kay. Perhaps this form was erroneously cited as L. crythrocephalus 

 in Turner's paper. The only other note I have seen on the habits 

 of Australian Leptomyrmex is the following sentence in Lowne's paper ^ 

 referring to L. erythrocephalus: " I never saw but one specimen of this 

 remarkable insect alive; it was rimning upon the ground in the bush; 

 it frec}uently took a leap of nearly three inches ; it does not run so fast 

 as its form would lead one to suppose." As I have seen many Lepto- 

 myrmex running about and have never seen any of them jump, I am 

 sure that Lowne's statement is erroneous. He must have mistaken 

 some jumping Myrmecia, probably nic/rocincta F. Smith, for a Lepto- 

 myrmex. 



I have found the nests and observed something of the behavior of 

 the following species and varieties of Leptomyrmex: erythrocephalus, 

 nigrivcntris, unicolor and the varieties rufipes and ruficeps of varians. 

 All of these ants, and also the other species of which I have seen only 

 single workers or specimens taken by other collectors {L. frogc/atti, 

 wiburdi and var. pictus and L. varians var. rothneyi) live in the woods 

 and never in open, cleared country. Z. unicolor is confined to the 

 shady rain-forests ("scrub") of northern Queensland, L. varians var. 

 ruficeps occupies similar stations in the same region, the var. rothneyi 

 and rufipes prefer the open Eucalyptus forests of the dryer portions 

 of Queensland and nigriventris, ivibiirdi and erythrocephalus inhabit 

 similar situations in New South Wales, especially in the Triassic sand- 

 stone region of the Blue Mountains. 



The nests are either in the ground or in great rotten logs, and 

 although one may readily locate them by carefully following foraging 

 workers, one is often disappointed to find them in situations where 

 they cannot be excavated. When in the ground the nest is usually 



3 Notes upon the Formicidse of Mackay, Queensland, Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. 

 W., 22, 1897, 129-144 (1898). 



4 Fourmis Nouvelles d'Australie. Rev. Suisse Zool. 10, 473 (1902). 



5 Contributions to the Natural History of Australian Ants. The Ento- 

 mologist, 2, 278 (1865). 



