114 HYMENOrTEKA. 



swimming in the adult state on the surface of pools, and they 

 are the low, minute, degraded Proctotrupids, Prestv:i<-1n<i 

 nattnts and Polynema nutaim described by Mr. Lubbock. The 

 Hymenoptera do not imitate or mimic the forms of other in- 

 serts, but, on the contrary, their forms are extensively copied in 

 the Lepidoptera, and especially the Diptera. A partial excep- 

 tion to this law is seen in the antennae of the Australian genus 

 T/HtiiiHtitnstmHi, where they are long and slender, and knobbed 

 as in the butterfly, and also in 7V//Wo///W nu'rahHi's of Smith, 

 from Brazil. 



The Hymenoptera, also, show their superiority to all other in- 

 sects in the form of their degraded wingless species, such as 

 J'<'Z<>ni<t<-/inx. the workers of Fonitira and the female of 3fntiUd. 

 In these forms we have no striking resemblances to lower orders 

 and suborders, but a strong adherence to their own Hymenop- 

 terous characters. Again ; in the degradational winged forms, 

 we rarely find the antennsv pectinated ; a common occurrence 

 in the lower .suborders. In a low species of the Apiaria 3 , 

 Lamprocolletes rlmlm-cms, from Australia, that land of anom- 

 alies, the antenna? are pectinated. This, Mr. F. Smith, the 

 best living authority on this suborder, says, " is certainly the 

 most remarkable bee that 1 have seen, and the only in- 

 stance, to my knowledge, of a bee having pectinated antenme ; 

 such an occurrence, indeed, in the Aculeate Hymenoptera is 

 only known in two or three instances, as in Psammotherma flub- 

 eUttta amongst the MutiUidw, and again in Ctntvwntx Khujii 

 in the Pompilidce; there is also a modification of it in one or 

 two other species of PompiUdw ." Among the Tenthre- 

 d i a )(lu>, the male Lopltyrus has well-pectinated antenna?, as 

 also has Cladomacra macropus of Smith, from New (riiinea 

 and Celebes. 



The wings of perhaps the most degraded Hymenoptera, the 

 Proctotrupidce, are rarely fissured; when this occurs, as in 

 Pteratomus Pudnimii, they somewhat resemble those of Ptvro- 

 pJwrus, the lowest moth. It is extremely rare that the com- 

 pound eyes are replaced by stemmata, or simple eyes ; in but 

 one instance, the genus Antliopliorabia, are the eyes in the 

 male sex reduced to a simple ocellus. This species lives in the 

 <larkness of the cells of Anthophora. 



