114 HYMENOPTERA. 



swimming in the adult state on tlie surface of pools, and they 

 are the low, minute, degraded Proctotrupids, Prestivichia 

 nutans and Pohjnema natans described by Mr. Lubbock. The 

 Hymenoptera do not imitate or mimic the forms of other in- 

 sects, but, on the contrary, their forms are extensively copied in 

 the Lepidoptera, and especially the Diptera. A partial excep- 

 tion to this law is seen in the antennae of the Australian genus 

 Thaumatoso7na, where they are long and slender, and knobbed 

 as in the butterfly, and also in Tetralonia mirabilis of Smith, 

 from Brazil. 



The Hymenoptera, also, show their superiority to all other in- 

 sects in the form of their degraded wingless species, such as 

 Fezomachus, the workers of Formica and the female of Miitilla. 

 In these forms we have no striking resemblances to lower orders 

 and suborders, but a strong adherence to their own H^-menop- 

 terous characters. Again ; in the degradational winged forms, 

 we rarely find the antennae pectinated ; a common occurrence 

 in the lower suborders. In a low species of the Apiarim ^ 

 Lam]?wcoUetes cladocenis, from Australia, — that land of anom- 

 alies, — the antennae are pectinated. This, Mr. F. Smith, the 

 best living authority on this suborder, says, "is certainly the 

 most remarkable bee that I have seen, and the only in- 

 stance, to ni}^ knowledge, of a bee having pectinated antennae ; 

 such an occurrence, indeed, in the Aculeate Hymenoptera is 

 only known in two or three instances, as m. Psammotherma flah- 

 ellata amongst the Jfutillidce, and again in Ctenocerus Klugii 

 in the Pompilidoi ; there is also a modification of it in one or 

 two other species of Po'm2')ilidce ." Among the Tenthre- 

 dinidce, the male Lojyhyrus has Avell-pectinated antennas, as 

 also has Cladomacra macropus of Smith, from New Guinea 

 and Celebes. 



The wings of perhaps the most degraded Hymenoptera, the 

 Proctotrupidce, are rarely fissured ; when this occurs, as in 

 P'.eratomus Putnamii, they somewhat resemble those of Ptero- 

 phorus, the lowest moth. It is extremely rare that the com- 

 pound eyes are replaced by stemmata, or simple eyes ; in but 

 one instance, the genus Antlioplwrahia^ are the eyes in the 

 male sex reduced to a simple ocellus. This species lives in the 

 darkness of the cells of Anthophora. 



