U'ii2.] 199 



differ, Uie J is the darker sex. There are, however, a few other 

 exceptions to this rule in certain genera, but I know of none such in the 

 Blennocampini or in any of the tribes most nearly allied to them. 



2 Pristiphora geniculata Hartig { = cheiloii Zadd.). 



Miss E. Chawner, F.E.S., has reared both sexes of this species from 

 larvae which she found on June 21st feeding gregariously on Mountain 

 Ash {Sorhus auciij^aria) in the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst. She 

 describes these larvae, which were nearly full-fed, as " half an inch long, 

 stout and rather i3at; head honey-yellow; body greenish-yellow with 

 black dots along the sides. They left off feeding the next day, and 

 cleared to bright yellow Avith black dots ; then they went into earth." 

 About the end of July the imagines began to emerge, mostly 5 $ , but 

 two, which were smaller than the others and were the first to go down, 

 developed into c? d • ®ne of the $ 5 laidparthenogenetic eggs (which, 

 Miss Chawner tells me, have not yet hatched) " in the edges of Mountain 

 Ash leaves, going all round the leaves between the serrations." 



I have seen one of these d J and several of the $ $ , and they 

 undoubtedly belong to the species of which Zaddach has figured the 

 larvae, and described both sexes of the imago, as Neinatus cheilon. 

 His specimens were reared (by Brischke) from Sorbus aucuparia. The 

 insect, according to our present nomenclature, is a Pristiphora^ the 

 largest form known to me of that genus (5-7f mm. long), and the only 

 one that has been found on Mountain Ash. Continental authors (Konow, 

 v. Dalla Torre, and Enslin) identify this species with the Nemafiis 

 geniculatus tabulated by Hartig in Stettin. Ent. Zeit. 1840; and, 

 assuming them to be correct in this, Hartig's name has priority over 

 cheilon, of which the larva was figured in 1882 and the imagines 

 described in 1883. Hartig tabulates genictdatus Avithout mentioning its 

 food-plant, and separates it from the spp. which he considers its nearest 

 congeners by a character of which Zaddach says nothing, namely " ventre 

 apice rufo $ natibus rufis." One would gather from Zaddach's diagnosis 

 that the abdomen of his cheilon was black in both sexes, and I find that 

 in the J sent to me by Miss Chawner it is entirely so, but that in all 

 her 5 5 there are traces of a little very obscure rufescence in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the saw-sheath — so little and so obscure that it might easily 

 be overlooked ! No doubt in some specimens the rufescence may be 

 more extensive and conspicuous, and I see that Enslin enumerates 

 geniculata ( = cheilon) both among the species with entirely black 

 abdomen and among those in which the abdomen is " more or less pale 

 at least on the venter or the apex." 



