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3. Solenopsis geminata F. attacking Scaptocoris 
terginus Schiddte. 
No other insect has made me so much mischief as the 
neotropical ant Solenopsis geminata F. I first became 
aquainted with this voracious and almost omnivorous ant 
when living at the Mendocinian railway station Santa 
Rosa. At first I wondered, why my small „papers“ 
containing newly collected insects that in the evening 
were placed in the window-frames of the office of the 
station for drying, the next morning were found to con- 
tain only a fine, dustlike powder, without any trace of 
the robber; but I rather soon found out, who was the 
malefactor: the said ant of course! Later on I learned 
that my boxes with pinned insects likewise contained but 
dust — and the pins! In fact it was almost impossible to 
keep those ants off my collected materials; even when I 
placed my things hanging in the middle of an iron-wire 
stretched from one wall to another ‘outside the railway 
station, the ants found their way to the collections; they 
did not do so the first day after, and I was already sure 
they were handicapped, but one or another investigator 
amongst them must have discovered my insect stock and 
made the fact known all over, for the day following I 
became astonished by seeing a procession of thousands of 
ants wandering up the walls and along the iron-wire into 
their eldorado alias my insect collection. Their imperti- 
nence culminated in attacking me personally when in bed. 
Meanwhile I do not think to mention all the evils this 
ant caused me, but wish to give an account of its be- 
haviour against an interesting hemipteron, the Scaptocoris 
terginus Schiddte. I had now and then found a single 
specimen of this pale brown, very convex, digging bug 
drowned in some water, remaining from the last showers, 
in the cavities of some ironware that was thrown in a 
heap close to the station, and as I otherwise could not 
find the species, I was not far from thinking it was noc- 
