QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE CONNECTED WITH THE ANT GENUS LASIUS AND ITS SUBGENERA

There seems to be no end to the nomenclatorial cataclysms precipitated by men who delight in resuscitating and re,tilting musty entomological documents that have been unfortunately spared by the tooth of time to plague those among us who wish to see taxonomy rapidly stabilized so that we may be able to give .all our attention to more interesting and important matters. Just as we were beginning to flatter ourselves that a few common insect names in universal use for the greater part of a century must at last be immune from the inroads of the resuscitators we are informed by Morice and Durrant that our familiar generic name Lasius, which has been borne so long by the common garden ant, probably the most abundant insect of the northern hemisphere, must be consigned to the synonymic limbo and replaced by a new name. The case is so clearly stated by Donisthorpe in his excellent monograph of British ants that I shall quote his account of it. "Fabricius (Syst. Piez., 415, 1804) published a heterotypical genus Lasius for the reception of ten species of ants, but this use of the name is invalid since Lasius (Type Apis quadrimaculata Panz.) had already been used by Jurine for a genus of bees [Erlangen Litteraturzeitg., 1, 164, No. 33, 1801" Nouv. Mth. Hym., 3538, No. 33, Pf. 4, 33, 11.33. 1807]. Latreille, Gen. Crust.


Psyche
[December M. clavata Stal the third antennal segment is more slender, the fourth conical, in the long-winged form the costal margins are distinctly curved, not parallel, and the discoidal area extends slightly beyond the middle of the hemielytra; in M. lurida Stal the third and fourth antennal segments are longer, scarcely clavate; and in M. uniformis Stal the antennm are much shorter.

QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE CONNECTED WITH
THE ANT GENUS LASIUS AND ITS SUBGENERA. BY WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER, Bussey Institution, Harvard University.
There seems to be no end to the nomenclatorial cataclysms precipitated by men who delight in resuscitating and re,tilting musty entomological documents that have been unfortunately spared by the tooth of time to plague those among us who wish to see taxonomy rapidly stabilized so that we may be able to give .all our attention to more interesting and important matters. Just as we were beginning to flatter ourselves that a few common insect names in universal use for the greater part of a century must at last be immune from the inroads of the resuscitators we are informed by Morice and Durrant that our familiar generic name Lasius, which has been borne so long by the common garden ant, probably the most abundant insect of the northern hemisphere, must be consigned to the synonymic limbo and replaced by a new name. The case is so clearly stated by Donisthorpe in his excellent monograph of British ants that I shall quote his account of it. "Fabricius (Syst. Piez., 415, 1804) published a heterotypical genus Lasius for the reception of ten species of ants, but this use of the name is invalid since Lasius (Type Apis quadrimaculata Panz.) had already been used by Jurine for a genus of bees [Erlangen Litteraturzeitg., 1, 164, No. 33, 1801" Nouv. Mth. Hym., 35-38, No. 33, Pf. 4, 33, 11.33. 1807]. Latreille, Gen. Crust.
The authorship and first publication of the "Jurinean" Genera of ttymenoptera: being reprint of long-lost work of :Panzer, with translation into English, and Introduction and Bibliographical and Critical Notes. Trans. Ent. Soc., London, 1914London, (1915 , 338 (1903) and Wheeler Ann.. New York Acad. Sc., 1, 165 (1911), also cite niger as the type. This species was also adopted as the type by Morice and Durrant Trans. Ent. Soc., London, 1914, 9, 4 Type" niger L. (flavus ex Ruzsky).
Type" fuliginosus Latr." This arrangement seems to me to be inadmissible, first, because Forel has no right to change the type of the subgenus Chthonolasius from L. flavus to L. niger, and second, because these two forms, in my opinion, represent distinct subgenera, Chthonolasius (= Formicina) being sufficiently characterized by the shape of the maxillary palpi of the female and worker, the vestigial eyes of the worker and the hypogeic mode of life. In the two latter characters the species of Chthonolasius resemble those of Acanthomyops and not niger and its allies. As an after-thought, however, Forel appends the following postscript" "Mr. Emery m'crit qu'h son avis il vaudrait mieux prendre pour Lasius le nom nouvellement deterr par Wheeler de Formicina Shuck., nora en partie bas sur le Lasius flavus. Je n'ai rien y opposer, pourvu qu'on finisse une bonne lois avec ces dmnagements perptuels des anciens noms." I infer, therefore, that he now favors an arrangement like that given above (p. 170) with Formicinaas the genus, but with Donisthorpea eliminated and its species included in the subgenus Formicina.
For the present I propose to be conservative and to retain Lasius Fabr., because the status of Panzer's Erlangen list seems to me to be very dubious and because I sympathize with those entomologists who decline to abolish generic names in universal use for more Fourmis du Cogo et d'autres provenances coltes par M. M. Hermann Kohl, Luja, Mayne, etc. Rev. Suisse Zool. 24, 1916. p. 460. POSTSCRIPT.
Since the preceding article was sent to the Editor of PSYCHE, I have received from Professor Emery a paper (Formiche d'Italia nuove o critiche. Rend. R. Accad. Sc. Ist. Bologna 1 Matzo, 1The subgenus Dendrolasius, which should include besides the subgenotype L. fuliginosus, the peculiar Japanese L. spathepus Wheeler, is confined to Eurasia and is therefore omitted. 1916, pp. 53-66, 7 figs.) in which he discusses the synonymy of Lasius and its subgenera. He accepts Jurine's Lasius as valid and substitutes Formicina Shuckard for Lasius Fabricius, presenting the same arrangement of the subgenera and their types as I have given on page 170. I am still unable to take this view of the matter, because I am not convinced that the generic name of another author (in this case Jurine) is valid when cited in an anonymous paper which itself has no taxonomic status. It would seem that if an anonymous author later acknowledges the authorship of his paper, the validity of the latter should date only from the time of this acknowledgment. If this rule were followed, "SAN IRANCISCO, CALIF., Aug. 8, 1916. "My dear Prof. Wheeler: "One of my most interesting days on the Pacific Coast this summer was spent with Fordyce Grinnell on a thirty-mile tramp through the Sierra Madre, July 8. Starting from Pasadena we followed the Arroyo Seco to the Divide, came up around Mount Gabriel (6,150 feet) and reached Mount Lowe (5,650 feet) in time for a glorious sunset. Our descent from Mount Lowe was made over the steep and winding ridge trail after dark. There was no moon, but a star-studded sky, while 5,000 feet below Pasadena and Los Angeles had been transformed into a sea of sparkling lights.
"Down at about the 4,000 feet level we stopped before a bright spark rapidly crossing the trail. Expecting to find one of the Lampyrids, or fireflies, which, Grinnell told me were uncommon in the region, westruck a match and to our surprise found an ant. Neither of us had heard of phosphorescent ants before. In a