BY WALTER W. FROGGATT. 153 



chance if one is content to wait for the next year's crop of galls. 

 There is certainly not much at present to show for a good deal of 

 careful work ; but when one sees the large number of trees that are 

 attacked and often rendered seedless year after year, such know- 

 ledge as I am in search of must eventually become of more or less 

 value even from the economic standpoint. In working at their 

 classification I find the meagre details given by some of the earlier 

 describers very bewildering, and the hair-splitting of more recent 

 systematic entomologists even more distracting. I therefore pro- 

 visionally place the three species presently to be described under 

 the old genus Ci/nips. 



I propose to follow Cresson's arrangement of the genera 

 (Catalogue of North American Hymenoptera, 1887, a most useful 

 work to anybody interested in the study of hymenoptera). This 

 writer gives two tables of classification of Cynipidce ; first, Mr. 

 W. H. Ashmead's Synoptical Tables, taken from the Transactions 

 of the American Entomological Society for 1886, which only deals 

 with species occurring in that country ; and, secondly, a transla- 

 tion of Dr. Mayr's tables, taken from his "Die Genera der gallen- 

 bewohnendenCynipiden," which deals with European andAmerican 

 forms. The latter divides them into two groups, the first con- 

 taining the true gall-makers, and the second what he terms guest- 

 flies, or those living in the galls formed by the first section. The 

 three species I am about to describe are true gall-making Cynipids. 



CyNIPS ACACIiE-DISCOLORIS, n.Sp. 



Length of body, 2 lines. Expanse of wings, 4| lines. 



Head, thorax, and legs reddish-yellow; abdomen, eyes, markings 

 round the ocelli, and inner margins of femora of fore legs black. 

 Antennae reddish-brown ; first joint long, slightly curved, cylindri- 

 cal ; 2nd pear-shaped, narrowest at base ; 3rd and 4th smallest ; 

 5-lOth rounded at base, square across at apex; 11-1 3th forming an 

 oval club; all the joints clothed with fine hairs. Head narrow, 

 hollowed behind, base black, ocelli red, eyes black, very prominent. 

 Thorax : middle lobe of mesonotum large, scutellum large, smooth 



