BULLETIN 377, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



nine blocks east of the wharves at which the coffee ships usually dis- 

 charged their cargoes. It may be surmised, from the knowledge we 

 have since gained from studying the natural dispersion of this insect, 

 that it has been in the country for about 45 years. During that period 

 it has, expanded from the original colony to myriads of colonies, 

 extending its area of distribution into nine Southern States, the 

 many infestations covering a total area of considerably more than a 

 thousand square miles. 



PRESENT KNOWN DISTRIBUTION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. 

 Newell and Barber, 1 writing in 1913, recorded the known distri- 

 bution in the Southern States as confined to Louisiana, Mississippi, 



FIG. 1. Map showing the distribution of the Argentine ant in 1913 (inner line of small 

 dashes) and at the end of 1915 (outer line of longer dashes). (Original.) The outer 

 line has been drawn merely to connect the outlying points. It incloses some territory in 

 which the ant is not known to occur, as, for instance, western Florida. 



and Alabama, and established, the limits of this dispersion from 

 Montgomery, Ala., on the east, to Lake Charles, La., on the west, a 

 distance of 380 miles, and from Delta, La., on the north, to the 

 mouth of the Mississippi River, a distance of 250 miles. At the 

 present time the limits of the distribution are from Houston, Tex., 

 on the west, to Wilmington, N. C., on the east, and from Nashville, 

 Tenn., to the mouth of the Mississippi River, a distance of 1,100 miles 

 east and west and 500 miles north and south (map, fig. 1). Among 

 the cities known to be infested are Houston, Tex., Shreveport. La., 



1 Newell, Wilmon, and Barber, T. C. 

 Bui. 122, p. 14. 1913. 



The Argentine Ant. U. S. Dopt. Agr. Bur. Ent. 



