specimens. The dearth of such collections, both of ants and of all other groups of insects, excepting, perhaps, the Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, has not ceased to be a great drawback to the study of entomology in America.
The bibliography (Appendix E), which has been carried down to the close of the year 1908, is unfortunately very voluminous and includes many titles of unimportant works. Like all such compilations, it is necessarily incomplete, and undoubtedly contains positive errors. A serious attempt has been made, however, to reduce these to a minimum, and I shall be glad to receive any additions or corrections.
For portions of the text and many of the figures I have drawn rather freely on my previously published papers. A few entire chapters, in fact, such as those on polymorphism, have been reproduced with only slightl verbal alterations. Others, like Chapters XVIII and XX, are abridgments of longer accounts of the fungus-growing and honey ants recently published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.
I am under lasting obligations to Professor H. C. Bumpus for the interest he has shown in the progress of my work, and the aid which I received in its prosecution while I was Curator of Invertebrate Zoölogy in the American Museum of Natural History. To Mr. Roy W. Miner, Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Zoölogy in that institution, I am deeply indebted for much assistance in making out the table of contents, and especially in arranging and verifying the bibliography. Many of the illustrations have been made by Miss Ruth B. Howe. My friend, Professor Oliver S. Strong, of Columbia University, has most generously permitted me to use a number of the remarkable photographs which he and Mr. J. G. Hubbard took of living colonies of various ants in the possession of Miss Adele M. Fields. Three of my former pupils, Messrs. A. L. Melander, C. T. Brues and C. G. Hartman, have contributed several interesting figures, and Mr. Brues has aided me in reading the proof.
Bussey Institution,
- Forest Hills, Boston, Mass.,
- October 30, 1909.
