THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 303 



CLASSIFICATION OF THE FOSSORIAL, PREDACEOUS AND 



PARASITIC WASPS, OR THE SUPERFAMILY 



VESPOIDEA. 



BY WILLIAM H. ASHMEAD, M. A., D. SC, ASSISTANT CURATOR, U. S. 



NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



(Paper No. i6. — Continued from Vol. XXXV., p. 205.) 



Family XLIL— Mutillidae. 



1830. Mutillidae, Family (partim), Leach ; Edinb. Ency., IX., p. 145. 



1855. Mutillidje, Family (partim), Smith; Cat. Hym. Brit. Mus., 

 III., p. I. 



1899. Mutillidae, Family XLIL, Ashmead ; Journ. N. Y. Ent. Soc, 

 VII., p. 49. 



1899. Mutillidae, Family (partim), Fox; Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, 

 XXV., p. 220. 



1899. Mutiilidse, Famille (partim), Andre ; Spec. Hym. d'Eur. Tom. 

 VIII., pp. 1-77. 



1903. Mutillidae, Famille (paitim), Andre ; VVytsman's Gen. Ins., 

 Fam. Mutillidae. 



William E. Leach, and not Frederick Smith, as Ernest Andre has it, 

 was the first to establish the family Mjitillidce ; but none of these gentle- 

 men correctly defined it, and all have included genera which do not 

 belong to it. Some of the genera belong to the Bet hy I ides, one belongs 

 to the Thymiidce, one to the Cosilidce, and others to the Myrf/wsidce. 



The family, as here restricted, contains only wingless females, with 

 the thorax always undivided, or without trace of the pronotal or mesonotal 

 sutures, while the males are easily distinguished from those in other 

 families by having the abdomen terminating in two slender, straight spines, 

 which usually project from between the two plates of the pygidium — the 

 epipygium and the hypopygium. All other writers on these wasps, 

 namely, Klug, Lepeletier, Leach, Haliday, Radoszkowski, Sichel, Smith, 

 Saussure, Blake, Cresson, Fox, Peringuey and Andre, have, in my opinion, 

 included in the family genera or groups which do not belong to it, but 

 which fall naturally into other families, as I have clearly shown in my 

 characterization of the families. All its members are genuine parasites, 

 and live in tha nests of various bees and wasps. The family may be 

 separated into two closely-allied subfamilies, as follows ; 



