1949] 
Brown — Notes on Formicidce 
45 
There appears little objection to this move, though the 
differences between the Palearctic graminicola and the 
Nearctic form are very slight. The forms quadrispina 
and brevispinosa, however, cannot be considered valid 
forms. 
The Enzmannian subspecies ( quadrispina ) was taken 
(holotype worker) on the south slope of the Blue Hills, 
a rather restricted elevated area just outside Boston, 
Massachusetts. Two colonies collected by me in this 
locality were confined for several months in artificial 
nests. Specimens killed at the time of collection and 
others examined after two months of rearing show a 
wide range of variation in size, sculpture and color. The 
larger workers, mostly those killed at the time of collec- 
tion, agree well with the description and figures, as well 
as my impressions, gained from a rather cursory exami- 
nation of the type, of quadrispina. These workers also 
agree with Emery’s original description of amerieana 
and with specimens identified as amerieana by Wheeler 
and by Creighton. 
My nests also produced, after a month or so of sub- 
starvation conditions, small light-colored workers corres- 
ponding well with published descriptions of brevispinosa 
and with specimens determined as such in the Wheeler 
Collection. These workers were raised from small larvae 
during a period in which the colonies refused all types 
of prepared foods, including bread and fats. When ripe 
seed-heads of timothy and some small herbaceous plants 
were later introduced, the colony eagerly accepted the 
seeds as food, but the workers which had previously 
hatched never became, even after four weeks, as fully 
colored as the workers reared in the wild. I conclude 
that the variant brevispinosa is merely the stunted 
workers from either an incipient or poorly-nourished 
colony. 
Both my nests were taken under large, well-embedded 
stones in a rich, shady beech woods. Each colony occu- 
pied a small oval chamber in the soil, about three quar- 
ters of an inch in greatest diameter and less than a quar- 
ter inch deep, with the smooth lower surface of the stone 
