142 Psyche [October 



NOTE ON THE BRAZILIAN FIRE-ANT, SOLENOPSIS 

 SMVISSIMA F. SMITH. 



By William Morton Wheeler. 



^^While discussing the various North American forms of Solenop- 

 sis geminata Fabr. in a recent paper^ I stated that the ant described 

 many years ago as Myrmica soevissima by Frederick Smith from 

 specimens taken by Bates at Para, is, in all probability, identical 

 with the one later called Solenopsis pylades by Forel. My reasons 

 for making this statement were these: "In the first place. Smith's 

 description is unusually good and applies perfectly to the typical 

 yellow pylades. In the second place, his specimens were received 

 from Bates, who gives an interesting account of the habits of this 

 'fire-ant' in Brazil. Moreover, Mr. W. M. Mann, who collected 

 extensively in the region where Bates collected his specimens and 

 made his observations, tells me that it is there the only common 

 and widely distributed Solenopsis, and the numerous specimens 

 collected by Mr.^Mann prove to be the typical pylades Forel." 

 Forel, however, will not assent to this opinion. ^ He says that 

 Smith mentions a^worker major and a worker minor in his descrip- 

 tion, whereas it was precisely the feeble polymorphism of the 

 worker that led to the separation of pylades from geminata. Surely 

 Forel, who has had to spend so many precious hours in the inter- 

 pretation of Smith's inadequate and faulty specific descriptions, 

 ought not to regard his statements concerning major and minor 

 workers as meaning anything more than a perceptible difference 

 in size. My critic, however, completely ignores the second and 

 third points of my contention, which to me seemed to be the more 

 important. 



In order to settle the matter, I sent several specimens of the 

 typical yellow pylades Forel, taken by Dr. Mann at Para, to my 

 friend, Mr. Horace Dornisthorpe, with the request that he com- 

 pare them with the types of Smith's soevissima in the British Mu- 

 seum. He writes me under date of July 3 as follows : " I compared 



'Some Additions to the North American Ant-Fauna. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 34, 

 1915, p. 395. 



* Fourmis du Congo et d'autres provenances r^coitSea par MM. Hermann Kohl, Luja, 

 Mayne, etc. Rev. Suisse Zool., 2\. 1916, p. 459. 



