OF WASHINGTON. 65 
ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF CERTAIN POINTS IN THE MORPHOLOGY OF 
THE FAMILY CHALCIDID^E.*. 
BY L. O. HOWARD. 
The number of systematic workers upon this interesting and 
extensive family of parasitic Hymenoptera has always been small. 
Excluding more general writers, we may confine the number of 
specific workers of prominence to the following short list : Dai- 
man, Nees von Esenbeck, Ratzeburg, Forster, Reinhardt, 
Walker, Haliday, Thomson, Mayr, Rondani, Kirby, and Cam- 
eron. The work upon the family is, in fact, but just begun. 
The European fauna is by no means thoroughly worked up, ex- 
cept in a few sub-families, while in America probably not one 
species in a hundred has been described. 
Nees (1834) described 316 species of 32 genera ; Walker (1839) 
described 703 species of 12 genera ; the British Museum catalogue 
(1846) mentions 1,094 species of 130 genera ; Forster (1856) char- 
acterized 173 genera ; Kirchner (1867) catalogues 2,407 species of 
210 genera in Europe, and Thomson (1875) gives 658 Swedish 
species, belonging to 211 genera. The European genera, since 
Kirchner's catalogue, have been largely added to, and the species 
rather less so in proportion, and we may now roughly estimate 
the described European species at 2,800, and the genera at 300. 
In North America, including the West Indies and Mexico, 474 
species of 72 genera have been described up to this date. 
The insects of this family are quite closely related to the Proc- 
totrupidae both in structure and in habits, and to the Cynipidaa in 
structure and in the habits of certain forms of the families, /. ., 
certain Cynipidae are parasitic, and certain Chalcididae are gall- 
makers. The Chalcididae are distinguished from the Proctotru- 
pidae principally by antennal, terebral, and pronotal characters, 
in addition to that summary of all characters which Europeans 
call habitus, or general appearance, and which enables the prac- 
tised eye to at once place a species in its proper group. With 
* This paper, as published, is considerably abridged from its original 
form as read. It is but a hint at the external anatomy of the family, and 
will serve to give simply a general idea of the structure and some of its 
principal variations. JL/. O. H. 
