132 Mr. Smith's Essay on the Genera and 



wards. At every meal the ants swarmed on the dishes, and became 

 exceedingly annoying by getting under the dresses of the inmates. 

 Their multitudes were in the first instance thinned by putting 

 pieces of meat into bottles without corking, and laying them near 

 their Formicarium. Attracted by these baits, millions were 

 destroyed, and in summer when the males and females first ap- 

 peared, the hearth-stone was raised, and boiling water thrown 

 over apparently countless myriads ! At that time I obtained the 

 sexes, which usually escape notice from their minuteness, but in 

 houses infested they may be found on the windows. I never saw 

 a female winged, and I have taken that sex at the same time as the 

 winged males from the nest. 



Genus Myrmecina, Curtis. 



Antennae inserted in the middle of the face, not approximate, 

 12-jointed apparently in the female, 13-jointed in the male ; the 

 females mandibulate; mandibles sometimes wanting in the males. 

 Maxillary palpi 4-jointed ; labial palpi 3-jointed. Wings, anterior 

 pair having one marginal cell, appendiculated at its apex ; one sub- 

 marginal cell, a little longer than the marginal ; the discoidal 

 cells wanting ; the metathorax armed with spines in the females ; 

 the abdomen having two nodes at it its base. 



Sp. 1. Myrmecina Latreillii. 



Fcemina. — Rufo-fusca ; clypeo bidentato ; clypeo, mandibulis, 

 antennis, metathorace postice pedibusque rufo-pallidis ; capite 

 ruguloso, thorace supra longitudinaliter profunde striato ; meta- 

 thoracis spinis dentiformibus acutis ; alis fusco-brunneis. 



Mas. — Fusco-niger ; ocellis prominulis ; flagellis pallide rufo-tes- 

 taceis ; scapo brevi crassiusculo, fusco ; pedibus testaceo-rufis ; 

 alis fusco-brunneis. 



Myrmecina Latreillii, Curtis, Brit. Ent., vi. tab. 226 $ ; Trans. 



Linn. Soc, xxi. 218, 16, tab, 4, fig. 22 ; 



Westw. Introduc, ii. tab. 86, fig. 11. 

 Myrmica graminicola, Foerster, Hym. Stud. Form., 58, 30 $. 



Female. — Length 1| lin. Head, thorax above, and the abdo- 

 men, nigro-fuscous ; the face before the insertion of the antennae, 

 the latter as well the mandibles rufo-testaceous ; the scape stout, 

 about two-thirds of the length of the flagellum, of equal thickness 



