372 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXI, 



93 forms, the same number I have recorded in the following paper. 

 But a critical examination of this list shows that it must have been 

 compiled very largely from the literature and not from actual speci- 

 mens, for it still contains a goodly number of synonyms cited as 

 different species and several worthless names from authors like Say 

 and Buckley who were incapable of describing an ant so that it 

 could be recognized with certainty by any future entomologist. 

 When Ashmead's list is revised it is seen to contain 68 valid forms, 

 and only 53 that show evidence of having been actually taken in 

 New Jersey. 



Although my list is in all probability incomplete, it nevertheless 

 bears witness to the richness of the ant-fauna of New Jersey in par- 

 ticular and of temperate North America in general. This is evident 

 from a comparison with some of the well-known myrmecologies of 

 Europe. Forel^ cites 66 different forms from Switzerland, a country 

 somewhat more than twice as large as New Jersey and of even greater 

 physical diversity. From Sweden, which has 22 times the area of 

 New Jersey, Adlerz 2 records only 36 different Formicidae and from 

 the vast territory of European Russia Nasonov^ enumerates only 79. 

 And this latter list even includes a number of Mediterranean forms 

 like the species of Myrmecocystus, Messor, Pheidole, Dolichoderus, etc. 



As a rule ants depend so intimately for their welfare on precise 

 physical conditions that colonies which have not been established by 

 their queens in proper soil, moisture, and sunlight grow slowly and, 

 like plants under similarly unfavorable conditions, take on a more 

 or less depauperate appearance. This is indicated by the small size 

 of both colonies and individuals, and is most noticeable in species 

 that have exceeded the limits of their normal geographical range. 

 Within this range a species is usually confined to a particular station, 

 so that the collector soon learns to associate species with very definite 

 environments. Among our eastern ants we may recognize at least 

 six such stations, each occupied by a series of species which are often 

 so constantly associated with one another as to recall the plant 

 societies of botanists. According to these stations, the New Jersey 

 ants may be grouped as follows: 



I. The woodland, or silvicolous fauna, comprising the species that 

 inhabit our moist, shady forests. With the extinction or drainage 



* Les Fourmis de la Suisse. Zurich, 1874. 



' Myrmecologiska Studier II Svenska Myror och deras Lefnadsforhallanden. Bihang till K. 

 Svenska Vet.-Akad. Handlingar, Band 11, No. 8, 1886. 



' Contributions to the Natural History of the Ants (Formicariae). Publications of the Lab. 

 Zool. Mus. Univ. Moscow, Vol. IV, No. i, 1889, pp. 1-42; i-vi, Tab. i-ix (in Russian). 



