54 
Psyche 
[June 
involves the choice of the valid name. Either name is avail- 
able since both appeared in the same publication. It has 
been the practice of myrmecologists to use page precedence 
in deciding cases of this sort. In this instance the name 
bruesi has page precedence but I have selected ulcerosus as 
the valid name for two reasons. In the first place the fully 
ulcerate major worker of this ant is a most extraordinary 
insect and it seems well to retain a name which refers to 
this striking peculiarity even though it is not shown by all 
the major workers. In the second place the type locality of 
ulcerosus is in the Huachuca Mountains of Arizona. Since 
this ant appears to be much more abundant in the Hu- 
achucas than at Ft. Davis, Texas (the type locality of 
bruesi) it is advantageous to have the Huachuca Mountains 
as the type locality. 
It would be gratifying if the subgeneric affinities of this 
insect could be as easily handled as can the choice of its spe- 
cific name. Since bruesi was assigned to Myrmaphaenus and 
ulcerosus to Manniella, the inconsistency of a species split 
between two subgenera cannot be allowed to stand. The 
problem is to rectify this inconsistency with the least dam- 
age to the subgenera involved. In a previous publication 
(4) I have shown that the constitution of Myrmaphaenus 
is unusually heterogeneous. This is entirely due to Emery 
who, without giving any valid reason for the change, re- 
versed his earlier views in 1925 and combined in one group 
species which he had formerly assigned to three subgenera. 
This circumstance makes it impossible to select a clearly 
definitive character by which all the species belonging to 
Myrmaphaenus may be recognized. But it may be stated 
that there are some species in Myrmaphaenus that have a 
major worker in which the front of the head is obliquely 
truncated. There are some species in which the worker caste 
is polymorphic. There are some species known to have a 
normal female. If, therefore, we are dealing with a species 
which combines these three features, its inclusion in Myrma- 
phaenus causes no increase in heterogeneity on any of the 
above counts. As to whether this species shows the ‘sub- 
generic characteristic’ of Myrmaphaenus is not the question 
for, as things stand at present, there is no uniformly appli- 
