110 PIMPLINE ICHNEUMONIDAE 



Sciences in Philadelphia. Other collections from which material 

 used in the preparation of this paper was borrowed, were those 

 at the National Museum in Washington, the American Museum 

 in New York, the Museum of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History in Boston, the Children's Museum in Brooklyn and the 

 collection of the Dominion Entomologist of Canada. The 

 collections at the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia and the National Museum in Washington are 

 especially valuable, in that a number of type specimens are 

 located there. 



Historical 



Linnaeus was the first to describe insects in this group. From 

 his time down to the present, there have been numerous workers, 

 but beyond synoptic tables to the genera, they have done 

 nothing except to describe some of the species. 



Holmgren- called the genus Megarhyssa, Thalessa, in 1859, 

 but Adams had used this name in 1858 for a genus of mollusks. 

 Ashmead^ proposed the name Megarhyssa on account of the 

 name Thalessa being preoccupied in another branch of zoology. 

 Dalla Torre ^ places "non Adams 1858" after the reference to 

 Ashmead; this should have been placed after the reference to 

 Holmgren. 



The chief workers in this group have been Linnaeus, Fabricius, 

 Kriechbaumer, Cameron, Cresson and Viereck. Both Cresson 

 and Kriechbaumer not only described and named several new 

 species but each established a new genus. 



In the Proceedings of the United States National Museum 

 for 1901, vol. xxiii, Ashmead divides the sub-family Pimplinae 

 into tribes and establishes among others the tribe Pimplini. 

 Up to this point his synoptic tables may be made use of, but 

 when it is desired to determine the genera treated here it will 

 be necessary to use a new key, because other generic values 

 have been given to some characters, while the value of others 

 has been lessened. The 62nd fascicle of the Genera Insectorum 

 uses a key similar to the one used by Ashmead and the same 

 criticism applies to it. In Cresson's Synopsis of the Ilymen- 



= 5fver.s. Svensk. Vet.-Akad. Forh., xvi, 18.59, p. 122. 

 ' Canadian Entomologist, xxxii, 1900, p. 3G8. 

 ■• Catalof^us Hymenoptororuni, viii, j). 479. 



