238 THK CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



A REARING OF MELITTOBIA. 



On the 2ist September, 1891, on opening a small box of neglected 

 insects, etc., I caught a glimpse of several minute black flies as they flew 

 out. At the time I could not imagine what they were. The next day I 

 collected a lot of pupae of Tachina flies and enclosed them in tin boxes 

 to transform to imagines, but instead of the perfect fly appearing, the 

 boxes were filled with the same small flies as 1 had observed issue from 

 the opened box on the day previous, and then, as I remembered having 

 had some of those Tachina puparia in the box, I readily understood 

 whence the flies came. The pupte from which those little black hyper- 

 parasites were bred were taken from the cells of the common Mud-dauber 

 wasp. Afterwards I observed two specimens of this secondary parasite 

 creep from a minute opening in the end of a pinned pupa of the primary 

 Tachina fly which I had taken from a Mud-dauber's cell and put in my 

 cabinet. I mailed specimens of this species to the Department of Agri- 

 culture at Washington, where it was identified as Melittobia pelopaei. 

 This shows that the species of Melittobia are not exclusively parasitic on 

 Hymenopterous insects, but are sometimes secondary parasites. As Mr. 

 L. O. Howard wrote that the species of Melittobia had heretofore been 

 reared only from Hymenopterous insects, I thought this rearing of J/. 

 pelopaei from Dipterous puparia might prove of interest. 



A. N. Caudell, 



« Ringo, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, U. S. 



[Interesting papers on this genus will be found in the Proceedings of 

 the Entomological Society of Washington, Vol. II., No. 2, viz : — " Notes 

 on the genus Melittobia," by W. H. Ashmead (p. 228), and "The habits 

 of Melittobia," by L. O. Howard (p. 224). — Ed. C. E.] 



Mailed Sept. 3r(l. 



