2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.61. 



termination of unknown material. When genera have been put in 

 synonomy by the author, the bibliography has been included. 



The author is indebted to Mr. S. A. Rohwer, Custodian of Hymen- 

 optera, for many suggestions during the progress of the study, as well 

 as for notes on certain types in the Philadelphia Academy, subse- 

 quently confirmed by the writer on a visit to Philadelphia before the 

 manuscript was submitted. Since there exists in literature some con- 

 fusion regarding the names applied to various structures, it has be- 

 come necessary to call attention to the general external morphology, 

 and to make figures illustrating certain characters, which are used 

 in the key. These figures are from drawings by the author. 



Subfamily Leucospidinae. 



This subfamily of the Chalcididae resembled the subfamilies 

 Podagrioninae and Chalcidinae in having greatly swollen hind 

 femora, which are toothed or finely dentate beneath, large coxae, and 

 strongly curved hind tibiae. It is wholly different from Podagri- 

 oninae, however, in tlie structure of head, thorax, and abdomen, and 

 is readily distinguished from the Chalcidinae by the longitudinally 

 folded front wings, larger pronotum, abdomen, elliptical or obovate 

 in side view, from above usually swollen behind the middle, and by 

 an ovipositor mostly longer than the abdomen and more or less re- 

 flexed over the dorsum. The subfamily is a natural one with dis- 

 tinct habits, being parasitic in the nests of bees. Its distribution is 

 general but the species are more numerous in tropical countries. 

 Black and yellow coloring predominates sometimes accompanied by 

 metallic tints. Of the following genera given in the key, only Leu- 

 cospis and Epexoclaenoides are represented in the United States Na- 

 tional Museum. There are four other described genera of Leucos- 

 pidinae, namely, Exochlaenus Shipp, Micrapion Kriechbaumer, Exo- 

 daenoid^s Girault, and Parexoclaenus Girault, which are not recog- 

 nized because in my opinion the descriptions of these do not contain 

 characters of sufficient value to justify the establishment of new 

 genera. In 1894 Shipp transferred Leucospis anthidioides Westwood 

 to Exochlaenus Shipp, and stated in his description of the new genus 

 his reasons for separating it from Leucospis. If one had only a few 

 species of Leucospis for comparison the differences stated might well 

 seem im.portant, but in the light of species now available, the genus 

 Leucospis becomes broader in scope and includes all of the characters 

 noted by Shipp, with the exception of slightly longer front coxa and 

 11-segmented antennae, which seem to me specific rather than generic 

 characteristics. Dalla Torre in 1898 recognized the genus Exochlae- 

 nus and Ashmead in 1904 included it in his table of genera of the 



