228 HALIDAY ON 



either from inadvertence or on principle, he has retained his 

 original but now ambiguous name for the family. It seems 

 more correct to obviate this duplicity of terms by adopting, 

 instead of it, Alysiidce, as proposed by Mr. Stephens. I 

 should be still better pleased to avoid giving any names to 

 these sections; regarding their separation, for the present, 

 simply as a convenient artifice, which may possibly interfere 

 with the discernment of their true relations, as much as it 

 facilitates their examination in detail. It is never too soon to 

 retrace an erroneous course, and I have to regret having hastily 

 applied new-coined names to tribes so called, and similar 

 subdivisions of the family : renouncing such innovations as, at 

 least, premature, and retaining the name Ichneumones^ for 

 the family at large, we may speak of these, as 



Ichneumones which have no exterior cell of the disk in the 

 tipper wings, and do not inflect the abdomen completely, 

 whose pupa is enclosed in a cocoon spun by the larva, and is 

 not bent double; 



And first, of those with maxillary palpi of five joints ; 

 Fam. — Bracones, Ess. Braconid^e, Stephens. 



The native species, so far as they are known to me, may, I 

 think, be all arranged by relation to the four genera, Agathis, 

 Microgaster, Bracon, and Leiophron, as exemplified by 

 Agathis malvacearum, Latreille ; Ichneumon globatus, Linne ; 

 Bracon denigrator, Fabricius ; and Cryptus sticticus, Fa- 

 bricius. 



Having assembled the species I possess according as the 



c For the general characters with which Von Essenbeck has sought to corro- 

 borate this division seem vague and uncertain j but, from a cause alluded to 

 before, they were drawn from a comparison of genera in some degree fortuitously 

 assembled, so that no better result could be expected. If the families were 

 sufficiently distinguished by external appearance, it is not likely that they would 

 have eluded the tact and judgment of this distinguished author, to which our 

 present subject is scarcely less indebted than a sister science. The contents of 

 each family being reduced to more strict conformity with the principles of his 

 method, I cannot discover any auxiliary distinctive characters of general 

 application. 



'■ Or rather Ichneumonida, as used by British authors, for the sake of general 

 analogy find harmony of nomenclature. 



