1932 ] 
An Australian Leptanilla 
57 
is about half as wide and has subparallel sides. (2) The 
prothorax is sparsely spinulose while the curious structure 
on its ventral surface has its base densely and coarsely 
spinulose. (3) The two extremely long hairs at the poste- 
rior end are lacking in all specimens. ,, 
Emery, as is well known, regarded the Leptanillinse as 
constituting a special tribe of the Dorylinse, but Dr. G. C. 
Wheeler and I have raised the group to subfamily rank. 
Unquestionably, Emery, in his paper of 1904, based his 
opinion very largely on the singular characters of the fe- 
male, which he regarded as a true dichthadiigyne and com- 
pared with the female of Aenictus. Strangely enough, Em- 
ery seems not to have noticed the peculiar falcate shape of 
the female mandibles, so unlike those of the worker, a char- 
acter which, taken together with the absence of wings and 
the single segment of the pedicel, makes the resemblance to 
the females of the Dorylinse even greater than he supposed. 
But the males of the Leptanillinse and the larvse, as described 
and figured by G. C. Wheeler, are so very unlike those of the 
Dorylinse that we are bound to regard the striking similari- 
ties of the females as due to convergence. Emery’s original 
interpretation of the thoracic segmentation of the female 
Leptanilla was incorrect, because he regarded the portion 
of the thorax anterior to the pronounced transverse dorsal 
suture as the mesonotum, the portion posterior to the suture 
as the combined metanotum and epinotum. In a foot-note 
to his section on the Leptanillinse in the “Genera Insecto- 
rum” (1910), he recognized his error and adopted the in- 
terpretation which I have also reached, namely, that the 
presutural portion is the pronotum, the postsutural the com- 
bined meso- and epinotum. 
The occurrence of indigenous species of Leptanilla on is- 
lands like Corsica, Sardinia, Java and Australia is signifi- 
cant. Since the females are apterous and obviously too 
small and delicate to endure distant transportation in flot- 
sam and jetsom, we must suppose that they have occupied 
their present habitats since the islands mentioned were 
connected with the mainland. The Leptanillinse, therefore, 
must be very ancient, like many other components of the 
microgenton (Koenenia, Pauropus, Scolopendrella, Cam- 
podea, Iapyx, etc.) L. swani is particularly interesting in 
