1935] 
Australian Ant Genus Mayriella 
153 
three fourths of its dorsal surface consisting of the first 
segment. Sting apparently vestigial. Legs short; middle 
and hind tibiae spurless; tarsal claws slender and simple. 
Female. Very similar to the worker but decidedly larger 
and differing in the usual sexual characters. Eyes larger, 
with their pointed anterior ends terminating near the 
corners of the clypeus. Ocelli small, not closely approxi- 
mated. Thorax narrower than the head; pronotum short, 
truncated anteriorly, with sharply rectangular humeri ; 
mesonotum large, flattened above. Pedicel and gaster pro- 
portionally stouter than in the worker, the latter more 
elongate-elliptical. Wings long, narrow, pubescent, the an- 
terior pair with well-developed, elongate pterostigma, open 
submarginal cell, a single long cubital cell and a small, 
discoidal cell ; hind wings nearly veinless. 
Genotype: Mayriella abstinens Forel 
Mayriella resembles both Willowsiella and Romblonella 
in the shape of the head and thorax, the position of the 
eyes and the absence of promesonotal and mesoepinotal 
sutures but differs from both in its much smaller size and 
in the number of antennal joints, which is 11 in Willow- 
siella and 12 in Romblonella, with 3-jointed clubs. Moreover, 
the former of these genera lacks antennal scrobes and both 
have the petiole greatly enlarged. This is true also of the 
postpetiole in Romblonella. 
No observations have been published on the habits of 
Mayriella. My note-book shows that on Nov. 2, 1914, I 
found at Cairns, Queensland, three small colonies of 
M. abstinens nesting in sand. Each nest was a small regu- 
lar crater slightly more than an inch in diameter, with a 
minute central entrance. Each colony comprised between 
50 to 100 workers, which were huddled together with their 
scanty brood in small chambers only about an inch beneath 
the surface of the sand. The nests, except in their diminu- 
tive size, were exactly like those of several of the smaller 
species of Meranoplus ( oceanus , nanus , etc.) which are 
common in sandy spots in the open Australian bush. Al- 
though I collected several of the abstinens workers I have 
since been unable to find them among my mounted ma- 
terial and suspect that they must have been lost among 
