300 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.88 



There is some doubt that S. femorata is the correct name to use for 

 this species, although it is fairly clear that Fabricius himself ^* con- 

 sidered his species Crdbro femoratus and Chalcis pimctata the same. 

 He used the name 'pwictata for it in all his later works. The name 

 femorata^ however, has priority. Since Fabricius did not observe 

 priority in the use of names proposed by other authors, it is not sur- 

 prising to find that he did not observe priority in the use of his own 

 names. 



No specimens have been located that could be the types of Crahro 

 femoratus Fabricius, so the specimens labeled Chalcis furvctata in the 

 Fabricius collection at Kiel University have been taken as the types. 

 Dr. Olaw Schroeder has kindly made a detailed study of these types 

 for me. He states that the specimens sent for comparison are, on the 

 basis of the structural characters I asked him to examine, the same 

 as the types. 



Types for the synonyms : punctata Fabricius, type apparently the 

 same as that of femorata; fasciata Olivier, lost ; suhpunctata Walker, 

 lost ; nigropicta Cresson, 1816.1-1816.6, Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia; ignea Cresson, 1812, Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia ; mirahilis Cresson, 1792.1-1792.2, Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia, and 1656, U. S. National Museum. 



The available specimens of this species show distinct, but inter- 

 grading, differences in structure. Almost all the forms of this 

 species, both the extremes and the intermediates, have already been 

 described and named. I prefer to retain the single name for all 

 of them, as no reliable means has been found for separating them. 

 The species Chalcis fasciata Olivier and Smiera subpunctata Walker 

 have been synonymized with S. femorata by Kirby ^° and as the 

 types are lost, and the original descriptions show no reliable dis- 

 tinctions, the}'- may as well be left in synonymy. 



There are, in the Tropics, a great many species, both described 

 and undescribed, closely related to this one. To judge from the 

 collections of tropical Chalcididae I have seen, S. femorata is per- 

 haps the commonest species of this group in the West Indies and 

 Central America, particularly in cultivated areas. 



Hosts. — I have seen no reared material of this species, but the 

 following records of hosts have been published for Spilochalcis 

 femorata: Laphygma frugiperda Abbot and Smith [Wilson], 

 Hellothis ohsoleta (Fabricius) [Winburn and Painter] (Lepidoptera, 

 Noctuidae) . 



Distribution. — Florida, Georgia, Texas, Cuba, Haiti, Panama, 

 Puerto Rico. 



" Entomologla systematica, vol. 2, p. 196, 1793. 



« Journ. Linn. Soc. London, Zool., vol. 17, p. 66, 1883. 



