292 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 1 



As to the possible site of its introductiou : Mr. Chas. Dittmann, 

 one of the best posted coffee importers in New Orleans, informs me 

 that previous to 1890 all coffee steamers discharged at the wharves 

 located between Julia and Orange streets, never further up the river 

 than the latter ; in other words, the landings were made within a dis- 

 tance of six blocks alongside the river, or from the 12th to 18th 

 from Canal Street. Kunning east to St. Charles Avenue, this district 

 would cover the house in which I resided in 1891, and where I first 

 made acquaintance with the insect. This stretch of six blocks was, 

 in my opinion, the starting point from which the insect has spread 

 east, north, south and west ; that it was there, and previous to the 

 holding of the Cotton Centennial Exposition, the first invasion was 

 made, for the rate of increase up to 1891 would necessarily be slow, 

 but once started and nests established such increase would naturally 

 become more pronounced, especially as we know that no steps were 

 taken to check the advance. ^Moreover, at this date no note of com- 

 plaint was heard, showing that the insect did not force itself on the 

 attention of the ordinary observer by the mere fact of numbers ; in 

 fact, I believe that it was not until the year after the relaying of the 

 street railroad tracks on ^Magazine Street (about 1895 or 1896) that 

 the procession east became so pronounced as to cause general com- 

 plaints, which were reechoed in the press of the city. In the relaying 

 of these tracks, numbers of nests would be disturbed and the ants 

 driven to find new quarters. 



The insect was first described by Gustav IMayr in 1868^ in an ob- 

 scure annual of the Society of Naturalists at Modena, Italy, under 

 the name of Hypoclinea humilis, and from specimens collected during 

 1866 in the outskirts of Buenos Ayres. He described only the worker 

 ant, and it was not until February of this year that on the request of 

 Mr. Newell, full diagnoses of worker, male and female were published 

 by Prof. W. M. Wheeler.- Mayr does not mention this species in his 

 paper on the South American Formicidae,'^ published in 1887, nor in 

 his list of the Formicidae of the United States,* published the previous 

 year, the latter of which lists all forms known from this country at 

 that date. It does not figure in Cresson 's ' ' Synopsis of the Hymenop- 

 tera of the United States," also published in 1887. If the insect had 



iFormicidse novje iimericiui;e. 



2Jour. Econ. Eiit., Vol. I, No. 1, Feb., 1908, pp. 28-30. 



3Sudamenkanisclie Forraieiden. Vorh. zool-ltot. Ges. Wien, Vol. XXXVII, 

 pp. 511-562. 



*Die Formicideu der Vereiulgteii 8taateu von Xordamerika. XXXVI. p. 432 

 et seq. 



