114 HYMEXOPTERA. 



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

 are the low, minute, degraded Proctotrupids, Presticichia 

 natans and Polt/nema natans described by Mr. Lubbock. The 

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

 sects, 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 

 Thaumatosoma, where they are long and slender, and knobbed 

 as in the butterfly, and also in Tetralonia mirabilis 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 

 Pezomachus, the workers of Formica and the female of Mutilla. 

 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 antenna? pectinated ; a common occurrence 

 in the lower suborders. In a low species of the A.piance, 

 Lamprocolletes dadocerus, 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 I have seen, and the only in- 

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

 such an occurrence, indeed, in the Aculeate Hymenoptera is 

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

 ellata amongst the Mutillidce, and again in Ctenocerus Klugii 

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

 two other species of Pomp Hi dee." Among the Tenthre- 

 dinidce, the male Lopliyrus has well-pectinated antennae, as 

 also has Cladomacra macropus of Smith, from New Guinea 

 and Celebes. 



The wings of perhaps the most degraded H^ymenoptera, the 

 Proctotruftidce, arc rarely fissured ; when this occurs, as in 

 Pleratomus Putnamii, they somewhat resemble those of Ptero- 

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

 pound e} r es are replaced by stemmata, or simple eyes ; in but 

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

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

 darkness of the cells of Anthophora. 



