188 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 579. 



In the matter of breeding habits, too, there 

 is no longer a hope of meeting Professor 

 Wheeler's wishes. The queens seem never to 

 leave the nest voluntarily, or to fly about, as 

 ants should. Instead of raising an annual 

 brood of sexual individuals, there are young 

 males and females in the nests at all seasons 

 of the year. Males were seen at many differ- 

 ent times going about freely in the kelep- 

 protected cotton fields of Guatemala, and were 

 sometimes captured by workers and taken 

 down into their nests. Copulation inside the 

 nest has been observed by Mr. Argyle Mc- 

 Lachlan at Victoria. 



It is needless to multiply such fatal dis- 

 crepancies between the habits of the kelep and 

 those ascribed to the insects which Professor 

 Wheeler has studied. There remains only to 

 beg for mercy for these misguided creatures, 

 and for one who is made to suffer so much 

 embarrassment for having placed on record 

 facts which do not coincide with ' the litera- 

 ture of the subject.' 



My mistake with Leptogenys was especially 

 stupid and careless, for, as Professor Wheeler 

 reminds us, he had already published, in three 

 different papers, the statement that the, queens 

 are indistinguishable from the workers^ except 

 by their distended abdomens. But to me they 

 appear to be distinctly larger insects, of a 

 distinctly more reddish color, resembling in 

 these respects the queens of the keleps. Can 

 it be that Professor Wheeler had only laying 

 workers of Leptogenys, and not true queens? 

 Such a possibility might naturally suggest 

 itself,- but one must hesitate to believe that 

 Professor Wheeler could repeat for a fourth 

 time a statement which might prove so easily 

 to be erroneous. Of course, one would not 

 make such minor discrepancies the basis of a 

 general criticism of Professor Wheeler's ex- 

 cellent work on Poneridse and ants; it is men- 

 tioned now only because his own reference to 

 it appears somewhat inconsiderate. 



If one were to generalize on this series of 

 entomological episodes the deduction would 

 be that adequate ignorance of literature is a 

 necessary qualification for learning the habits 

 of a new insect like the kelep, for at each 

 important step the investigation has been met 



by Professor Wheeler's non possumns. Last 

 year he was quite as unable to believe that the 

 keleps would kill boll-weevils as he is to credit 

 now their failure to regurgitate nectar. After 

 surviving so many of these literary dangers 

 it is only natural that one become a little reck- 

 less, and Venture even to hope that in the 

 course of another year the additional facts, at 

 present so objectionable, will receive due 

 credence, having now become a part of ' litera- 

 ture of the subject.' 



Regarding the classification of the poneroid 

 insects. Professor Wheeler can be entirely re- 

 assured. The kelep does indeed have some 

 habits comparable with those of honey-bees, 

 but these traits have not seemed to require its 

 removal from its systematic position next to 

 the Poneridas. The several families of un- 

 expectedly diverse insects which have been 

 included hitherto in the Poneridse still consti- 

 tute a natural group, of higher systematic 

 rank, coordinate on the one hand with the 

 drivers, and on the other with the series of 

 families which may be referred to still as 

 ' true ants,' though these may prove to be an 

 artificial assemblage, their phylogenies not 

 having been traced. The differences of social 

 organization appear to forbid a close alliance 

 of the true ants with the poneroid series, or a 

 derivation from them. Ants and keleps are 

 similar, it is true, as all hymenoptera are, but 

 many of the resemblances isrove to be super- 

 ficial and indicative of parallel development 

 rather than of any recent community of 

 origin. Biological history abounds in such 

 instances where groups popularly supposed to 

 be closely alike have been found to be essen- 

 tially different. 



To permit the new facts and modifications 

 of doctrine to be properly assimilated, it is 

 now highly desirable that peace be restored in 

 the happy family of entomology. If I promise 

 to be very careful to write future papers on 

 the kelep as well as ignorance and other lim- 

 itations permit, it may be that Professor 

 Wheeler will deem it safe to renew and abide 

 by his former pledge of silence ; not, indeed, 

 till any too remote a period like the Greek 

 Kalends, but perhaps until he has seen and 

 studied some living keleps, or at least some 



