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IX. Further Observations on the Genus Anthophorabia. 

 By George Newport, Esq!, F.E.S., F.L.S. 8fc. 



Read February 3, 1852. 



.HAVING had the good fortune, in September last, to re-discover in the nests of Antho- 

 phora, at Gravesend, the Chalcididous parasite Anthophorabia, which, twenty years ago, 

 I found at Richborough in Kent — and an account of which is given in my paper on the 

 Chalcididce and Ichneumonidce — I feel it necessary to offer a few additional observations on 

 this insect ; since one of the most remarkable peculiarities of its male sex — and on account 

 of which the genus was characterized and named in that paper — has been denied to be a 

 fact — the denial being printed in the " Proceedings " of the Linnean Society*, and else- 

 where! . The peculiarity to which I allude is the possession of a single stemmatous eye, 

 in the place of a compound eye, at the sides of the head in the male. 



At the time of communicating my paper on the Chalcididce, &c, to this Society, I was 

 not in possession, as was then pretty well known, of specimens of the insect itself, but 

 only of delineations which I had made in the year 1831 from living specimens, and at 

 which time, and for two or three years afterwards, I found the insect in such abundance 

 that, expecting to be able to obtain it at pleasure, I neglected to preserve it. Through 

 the long interval of time which has since elapsed, up to September last, I have not 

 again been able to find it. It was upon the very fact of the existence of stemmatous 

 eyes, in the place of compound ones, in this insect, that some important physiological 

 deductions in my paper are founded ; and thence it was reasonable to expect that every 

 inquirer would have believed that of this fact, at least, I must have been quite certain, 

 before venturing to deduce conclusions. Yet this has been repeatedly questioned by Mr. 

 Westwood, and even in the " Proceedings " of the Society itself $. 



As I am now in possession of specimens of the insect, which I beg to lay before the 

 Society §, I am enabled to prove that not only do stemmatous eyes, instead of compound 

 ones, exist in the male, as I have stated, but also that the principal characters given in 

 my paper as marking the genus, — the enlargement and excavation of the basilar joint of 

 the antenna, as well as the enlargement of the middle joint, — are correct. The male has a 

 single stemmatous eye on each side of the head, and three stemmata on the vertex, so 



* Vol. ii. p. 37. 



t Gardeners' Chronicle, May 12, 1849, p. 295. Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. (2nd ser.) No. 19, vol. iv. p. 39, 

 July 1849. Trans. Entom. Soc. vol. v. part 7, 1849, p. lxv. 



X " The asserted possession of stemmatous eyes by the male was regarded as erroneous, there being no instance of 

 such a structure, throughout the whole range of winged insects, whilst it is essentially a character of some of the wing-- 

 less tribes." — Westwood in Proceedings of the Linnean Society, vol. ii. p. 37. 



§ Specimens of both sexes of the insect were exhibited at the Meeting. 



