1955 1 Gregg — Veromessor lobognathus 49 
the species which compose it, it may be taken as certain 
that a distributional gap exists between these two sites, 
as far as V. lobognathus is concerned, which is imposed 
by the lofty heights of the continental divide. It seems 
extremely improbable that future collecting will demon- 
strate a pattern of dispersal around the southern end of 
the Rockies, for if such existed, the species should find it- 
self in a much more congenial environment in the south 
and should have turned up as a fairly common ant in 
collections from such areas. The possibility of a connection 
across a low pass during a remote period cannot as yet 
be ruled out, however. 
In her description of lobognathus, Miss Andrews includes 
no mention of the habitat in which the ants were found. I 
have found no additional ecological information upon ex- 
amining the original hand-written notes. In the writer’s 
experience, the hills and canyon walls near Glenwood 
Springs are covered with scrub oaks, and the river bottom, 
where wide enough, has meadows with some willow and 
cottonwood. A small amount of pinyon and cedar is also 
known to be present. It is not known whether the types 
were obtained from natural vegetation or the altered 
conditions in the town. The specimens collected at Owl 
Canyon were definitely living under natural conditions in 
a stand of pinyon and cedar. This is an isolated wood- 
land (though some of the pinyons are extremely old and 
very large for the species) , whose nearest approach of 
similar vegetation containing pinyons is about 160 miles 
south near Colorado Springs, in the Garden of the Gods. 
The stand is, moreover, surrounded by plains vegetation 
of grassland and sagebrush, and by mountain mahogany 
which is a foothills plant. Varying explanations have 
been suggested to account for the presence of these conifers 
near Owl Canyon in view of the fact that pinyon, while 
occurring far north on the west side of the divide, stops 
at Colorado Springs on the east. It would appear that 
the most plausible diagnosis is the one offered by some 
botanists to the effect that we are confronted with a relict 
stand. If this is true, the known distribution of V. lobog- 
nathus coincides quite well with it, for its pattern looks 
