214 



two had been described by Smith under this name, he pro- 

 posed the name pythia for his own longiceps, in case ruginota 

 should prove to be identical with Smith's type. 



A study of a large number of specimens of Aphaenogaster 

 collected during 1915 by myself in many localities in New 

 South Wales and Queensland, and of many others recently 

 loaned me for study by the Museum of South Australia, from 

 Victoria, South and Western Australia, enables me to settle 

 the matter under discussion. It happens that there are not 

 only two, but three distinct, though superficially very similar 

 species of Aphaenogaster in Australia, and that all three have 

 had a share in the confusion. One, an undescribed species, 

 which I shall call barbigula, ranges over Western and South 

 Australia and eastward to the western portions of Victoria 

 and New South Wales. I feel certain that this is the form 

 called longiceps by Forel, when he is referring to specimens 

 from Adelaide, Victoria, and Western Australia. In fact, 

 some of my specimens from Victoria are from the same lot 

 as some of those cited by Forel (Sea Lake, collected by J. C. 

 Goudie). Of the two other species, one, extremely common 

 and widely-distributed throughout the coastal portions of 

 Victoria and New South Wales and the dryer portions of 

 Queensland, corresponds to Forel's ruginota; the other, 

 Forel's longiceps, seems to be rare and local, and is known 

 only from Queensland and northern New South Wales. 

 Suspecting that Forel and Emery had not interpreted Smith's 

 longiceps correctly, f forwarded specimens of all three species 

 to my friend, Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, who kindly compared 

 them very carefully with Smith's type. He writes me that 

 the type is undoubtedly what Forel called ruginota, and not 

 what he called longiceps. Hence ruginota becomes a synonym 

 of longiceps, Smith, and the rarer Queensland form. Forel's 

 longiceps, which was unknown to Smith, must take the name 

 pythia, Forel. That both of Emery's forms were longiceps 

 is proved by his figures of the males, since the male ^pythia is 

 quite different. Mayr probably confused both species. At 

 any rate, his description will apply to the male and female 

 of either, but as he introduced no new names his intepretation 

 is now a matter of little moment. The female of longiceps 

 had been previously described by Smith under the name of 

 Atta antipodu m . 



There is some doubt concerning the subgeneric position 

 of the Australian Aphaenogaster s. Forel placed longiceps 

 in the subgenus Ischnomyrmex because the male and female 

 have only one cubital cell in the fore winsf. When the type 

 of Ischnomyrmex proved to be a Pheidole, he changed the 

 name of the subgenus to Deromyrma and designated A 



