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A CATALOGUE OF PHILIPPINE HYMENOPTERA, WITH 
DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW SPECIES. 
By Rosert E. Brown, 8. J., Manila Observatory. 
In 1885, Don Ramon Jordana published in Madrid a work entitled 
“Bosquejo geografico é historico-natural del Archipiélago Filipino,” in 
which he tabulated all the species then known to belong to the Philippine 
fauna. The order [/ymenoptera was very poorly represented, no more 
than some thirty species being given as having been met with in the 
Philippines and none of these were characteristic. Ten years later, on 
the occasion of the exposition which was held in Manila in 1895, Father 
Castro de Elera, O. P., published another catalogue of the fauna of the 
Islands, which he entitled “Catalogo sistematico de toda la fauna de 
Filipinas conocida hasta el presente.” This work is much more pre- 
tentious and complete than that of Senior Jordana, though it is somewhat 
marred by the inclusion of many exotic forms which were contained in 
the Museum of the University of Saint Thomas; and although Father 
Elera explains this in the subtitle and notes the exotic species in the 
body of the work, still, unless one has this constantly before one’s mind, 
the impression is gained that the number of Philippine species is greater 
than it really is. In the catalogue of the Hymenoptera which is given in 
the second volume, pages 238-247, Father Elera enumerates fifty-four 
species as representing the known Philippine insects of this order. This 
is not quite correct, as he had inadvertently overlooked a paper published 
by Professor Emery in the Annals of the Entomological Society of 
France in 1893 in which forty-one species of ants are recorded from the 
Island of Luzon, principally from Manila and Antipolo. 
This then brought the Hymenoptera known in the Archipelago up 
to the year 1895 to the number of ninety-five. 
In 1903, Rev. William Stanton, 8. J., at that time Assistant Director 
of the Philippine Weather Bureau, began to study in his spare time the ~ 
Hymenoptera which he collected in the garden attached to the Observ- 
atory. He discovered many forms which he did not recognize, and, being 
unable to classify them owing to the lack of literature on the subject, he 
sent his specimens to Dr. William Ashmead, of the National Museum, 
Washington, who found that the great majority of the species were 
entirely new to science and that almost all the remainder were not before 
recorded from the Islands. 
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