REVIEW. 



German Periodical. 



Wiegman, Archiv.fur Naturgeschichte. Zweiter Jahrgany, 1, 2, und 3er, Heft. 



We now proceed to redeem the promise given in our last number to extract 

 what appears to be most interesting in the above work, and at the same time to 

 give a general idea of its contents. 



The first paper of the first part is an elaborate monagraph by Opatowski, De 

 Jamilia fungorum JBoletoideorum, three species of which he separates and forms 

 by them two new genera, which are characterized. The remainder, containing the 

 typical genus Boletus, he divides into sections and subsectionsaccording to the 

 structure of their tube. The species are described very fully, and the synonyms 

 carefully introduced. 



We have next Contributions to the History of the Hymenoptera, by Chr. 

 Drewson and F. Boie. This paper will necessarily be appreciated by the Entomo- 

 logist from the glimpses it gives into the history of a tribe of insects of which we 

 as yet possess but a very imperfect knowledge. The time has at length arrived 

 that due attention commences to be paid to the pupivorus Hymenoptera, which 

 from the exceedingly important function they perform in the economy of nature, 

 and the powerful influence they exercise over all the other orders of insects, cer- 

 tainly have not merited the almost gross neglect they have experienced until within 

 these few years. Gravenhorst's labours, in conjunction with those of his worthy 

 associate, Nees von Esenbeck, have reduced to something like systematic order 

 the chaos in which these insects had been left by all their predecessors ; but even 

 their works require revisal. Here we have the more important portion of the his- 

 tory of a few recorded, which exhibits them in the exercise of their prescribed 

 functions, and this with the exception of some scattered observations in the works 

 of Gravenhorst, Nees, and Curtis, in the papers of Haliday and Walker, and in 

 the pamphlet of Bouche, is all we as yet know of their " private history." We 

 present our compatriot entomologists with the substance of this paper in the hope 

 that it may induce those who possess the opportunity, or who happen to catch such 

 evanescent facts to record them ; and we invite them to do so, for our pages will 

 be always open to their use. It is almost only hence that we can expect to attain 

 a more natural arrangement of this extensive host than it has been possible hither- 

 to to construct. 



The following facts we find here recorded : — 



Ichneumon sicarius, Grav. Both sexes from the pupae of Lithosia rubri- 

 collis. 

 vol. i. 2b 



