70 Linnean Society. [March 5, 



Read also a paper entitled, " Further observations on the habits 

 of Monodontomerus , with some account of a new Acarus, Heteropus 

 ventricosus, a parasite in the nests of Anthophora retusa." By George 

 Newport. Esq., F.R.S.. F.L.S. &c. &c. 



Mr. Newport remarked that as some of the details of a paper on 

 " certain Chalcididce and IchneumonidcB " read to the Linnean Society 

 in March 1849 had drawn forth at that time the dissent of some en- 

 tomologists, he had repeated his observations during the past sum- 

 mer, and on one occasion had obtained as many as two hundred and 

 forty-seven larvae of Monodontomeri from the nests of Anthophora. 

 In every instance these parasites had fed on the bee laxvdi. fr-om with- 

 out, and had drained it of its contents in the same way that the 

 larva of Paniscus drains that of the body of a caterpillar, thus proving 

 the correctness of his original statement, that the Monodontomeri are 

 external and not internal feeding parasites. He had originally been 

 led to this view, not, as erroneously stated by Mr. Westwood in the 

 printed Proceedings of the Linnean Society for May 1849, p. 37 

 (Annals and Mag. Nat. History, Oct. 1849, p. 288), from the simple 

 fact that the author had found the bodies of these parasites covered 

 with an armature of hairs, but as he had explicitly stated in his 

 former paper, from the circumstance that he had never found hairs 

 on the bodies of inter7ial feeding parasites. Mr. Newport also found, 

 as he formerly mentioned, some remains of the destroyed bee larva 

 in each cell, but no "yellow dust or granules," as stated by another 

 observer. Thus his more recent observations have confirmed those 

 which he formerly communicated to the Society on the Monodon- 

 tomeri. 



Having however collected a quantity of these larvae for further 

 observation, he was surjorised to find at the end of a few days that 

 their bodies were covered with multitudes of what at first appeared 

 like microscopic drops of fluid, which each day increased in size, 

 until at length he found, on careful examination, that those supposed 

 drops were the bodies of multitudes of gravid parasites, which in- 

 fested and ultimately destroyed the larvae oi Monodontomerus , as these 

 had done that of the bee. The ceconomy of this microscopic para- 

 site was then traced to some extent, and the fact of their having 

 attained a mature state proved in the circumstance that at the end 

 of about three weeks many of them produced multitudes of extremely 

 minute young, which differed from their parents only in the smaller 

 size, and in having no enlargement of the abdominal portion of the 

 body. These young were smaller even than the young of Stylops, 

 as each measured only sixteen thousandths of an inch in length. The 



