1910] Wheeler — Mites of the Genus Antennophorus 3 
aphids and root-coccids and may be said to live in permanent symbiosis 
with these Homoptera, we can understand why the mites occur only 
on these particular ants. ‘The plant-lice and mealy-bugs pump the 
juices out of the plants and pass on to the soliciting ants the unas- 
similated portions in the form of saccharine excrement, while the ants 
regurgitate some of the liquid to the mites which ask for it by aping, 
with their long, hairy, forelegs the antennal movements of hungry ants. 
In other words the ants serve as cup-bearers, distributing to one 
another and to the indolent, sedentary Antennophori the nectar which 
the tapster aphids and coccids keep drawing from their vegetable 
hosts. 
Owing to this intimate serial ethological arrangement the worker 
Lasvi, unlike most of our ants, do not have to come out on to the 
surface of the ground to seek their food, but live a hypogaeic, or sub- 
terranean life. The eyes of these workers have therefore become so 
minute that their visual powers must have nearly or quite disappeared. 
We can, perhaps, best appreciate the relations of these ants to their 
parasites, if we fancy ourselves blind and condemned to live in dark 
cellars and continually occupied in pasturing and milking fat, sluggish 
cows that yielded quantities of strained honey instead of milk. Then 
let us suppose that occasionally there alighted on our cheeks or backs 
small creatures which took great care not to annoy us by placing 
themselves in positions asymmetrical to the median longitudinal axis 
of our bodies, and stretched forth to us from time to time small, soft 
hands like those of our children, begging for a little of the honey. 
Should we not, under the circumstances, treat these little Old Men 
of the Sea with much lenity or even with something akin to affection ? 
During the coming spring I shall endeavor to make a more detailed 
study of the habits of A. donisthorpei and of the other species A. 
wasmanni, which, to judge from its longer appendages, must be an 
even more persevering and impudent beggar. For the present I shall 
confine myself to giving a description and several figures of both sexes 
of the two species, so that they may be easily recognized by other 
students of our North American myrmecophiles. 
Antennophorus donisthorpei sp. nov. 
Male. (Figs. 1, 2, 4 and 8.) Body nearly as broad as long, broadly 
oval or subtrapezoidal, broader behind than in front, with very obtuse anterior 
and posterior borders, the latter in some specimens almost straight. In 
