84 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



wasps to give the alarm following- any disturbance at the 

 mouth of the nest. He described the habit of the insects, 

 when alarmed or disturbed, of clustering in dense masses or 

 rows at the mouth or opening leading to the nest ready to 

 attack the culprit en masse. 



Mr. Stedman asked if benzine would not serve very well to 

 destroy the nests and wasps. 



Mr. Howard said that he had used kerosene very success 

 fully for this purpose. 



Mr. Howard then read a paper of which he has furnished 

 the following abstract : 



A NEW REMARKABLE GENUS OF ENCYRTIN^E. 



BY L. O. HOWARD. 



The only Bncyrtid with ramose antennae ever found prior to 

 last year, was the single male specimen found in 1837, in 

 Coombe Woods, England, upon which Westwood founded his 

 genus Tetracnemus. 



Mr. Ashmead announced to this Society, February 7, 1890, 

 that he had found in Florida a male Kncyrtid which corre 

 sponded exactly to Westwood' s description of Tetracnemus 

 diver sicornis. 



I exhibit herewith a second genus of Encyrtinse which 

 shows this antennal peculiarity, so that Tetracnemus no longer 

 remains the striking abnormality which it has hitherto been 

 considered. 



This new form of which we are also extremely fortunate to 

 possess the female sex, while bearing a strong superficial re 

 semblance to Tetracnemus, differs from it and from all other 

 genera of the subfamily to which it plainly belongs by the 

 possession of two ring joints to the antennae, by the propor 

 tions of the antennal joints, by the fact that the ocelli are 

 placed in a straight line across the top of the head, by the fact 

 that the whole surface of the female abdomen is densely 

 punctate, by the fact that the ovipositor is directed dorsally at 

 right angles to the plane of the abdomen, and by the fact that 

 the stigmal vein is long, straight, and descends almost verti 

 cally into the disc of the wing. From this last character 

 I have called the new genus Tanaostigma^ and have drawn up 

 full descriptions of both sexes, \vhich it will be unnecessary to 

 read at this time.* The species I have named T. courseticz. It 



^Published in full in Insect Life, Vol. Ill, No. 4, pp. 145-148, Nov. 1890. 



