690 CATALOGUE OP THE DESCRIBED HYMENOPTERA OF AUSTRALIA, 



In concluding this preface, I must state that it is through the 

 liberal assistance of Sir William Macleay, and the use of his 

 library and collections that I am enabled to compile this catalogue. 

 I am also greatly indebted to Mr. J. J. Fletcher of the Linnean 

 Society, and Mr. F. A. A. Skuse of the Australian Museum, for the 

 assistance I received from both these gentlemen in hunting up 

 many obscure references and many useful hints in the course of 

 this work. 



Part I. contains the families Tenthredinidce to the end of 

 Thynnidce ; I have followed Kirby's classification. 



Family TENTHKEDINID^. 



This family was first noted from Australia by Klug in the 

 "Berlin Magazine" 1814, when he formed the genus Fterygo- 

 phorus, and described our two commonest species. Nothing is 

 recorded about the habits of these insects, but I am enabled to 

 give some information about their life-history from having bred 

 some recently. The lai-vse are of a dirty green colour with a broad 

 head, tapering towards the tip of the abdomen, the anal segment 

 being produced into a long, slender tail which curls over the 

 back ; they feed singly during the day on leaves of Eucalypts, and 

 when full grown bore into dead wood, stopping up the entrance 

 with the bits of wood gnawed out of the chamber in which they 

 undergo their metamorphosis without forming any cocoon. 



In 1817, Dr. Leach in his "Zoological Miscellanies," Vol. III., 

 formed the genus Perga containing our largest and most brilliant 

 saw-flies, which evidently take the place of the foreign genus 

 Cimbex, to which they are closely allied ; and he described six 

 species. Then Westwood in his " Arcana Entomologica," 1841, 

 and later on in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1880, 

 added greatly to the list. Other writers have described single 

 s])ecies ; Kirby's " List of Hymenoptera," Vol. I., 1882, gives a 

 complete list of described saw-flies up to date, and describes a 

 number of new species in the British Museum. The larvee of 



