Vol. XXV] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 119 



The Bethylid Genus Mesitius in South America 



(Hym.). 



By CHARLES T. BRUES, Bussey Institution, Harvard 



University. 



The members of the remarkable genus Mesitius Spinola 1 

 are some of the largest and perhaps the most strikingly orna- 

 mented species of the varied family Bethylidae. A considerable 

 number of species have been described from the Old World, 

 several of which have been most beautifully figured by West- 

 wood. 2 So far, however, the genus has not been recorded 

 from the Western Hemisphere, although Ashmead 3 referred 

 to it a number of North American insects which have since 

 been shown by Kieffer 4 to fall into quite a different genus, 

 Epyris. 



The South American specimen upon which the present note 

 is based was collected at Bartica, British Guiana, by H. S. 

 Parish, and given me by Prof. A. L. Melander. It represents 

 a new species which may be described as follows: 

 Mesitius neotropicus sp. nov. 



$ Length 9.5 mm. Metallic green, blue and purple, scutellum fer- 

 ruginous ; head thorax and abdomen spotted with yellowish white ; 

 wings infuscated at base and apex. 



Head two and one-fourth times as wide as thick, rather coarsely, 

 irregularly confluently punctate above and on the face, more sparsely 

 so behind, especially on the cheeks ; occiput and temples margined ; 

 ocelli in a small triangle, thrice as far from the eye margin as from 

 one another; eyes large, oval, much narrowed below, bare; malar space 

 very short, not furrowed. Antennae (3-jointed; scape as long as the 

 pedicel and first flagellar joint together, the latter twice as long as the 

 pedicel and four times as long as thick; joints from thence onward 

 shortening to less than twice their own width just before the apex. 

 Ocelli large, on a tubercle in a very small triangle; the face below them 

 with a median groove that extends to the base of the antennae. Head 

 above greenish aeneous, below aeneous ; front on each side below witl- 

 a large triangular whitish spot which nearly meets the apex of thf 



a Mem. Acad. Sci. Torino (2), vol. 13, p. 73. (1851). 

 "Thesaur. Entom. Oxon., plate 31, figs. 8-n. (1874). 

 'Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 45, p. 62. (1893). 

 4 Ann. Soc. Sci. Bruxelles, vol. 29 (2), p. 109. (1905). 



