19170 241 



Dalilbomian species, for he described it without hesitation as a new 

 species under the name serlcatus. And this is the \\A\\\Q~sericatus 

 Gerstaecker — which our insect, if it be not really maiuilbulnris, ought 

 to bear. 



Had there been any reason to think that Dahlbom's mandibularis 

 was a Swedish insect, one would hesitate to question Thomson's identifi- 

 cation of it. But, on the contrary, it was almost certainly not so ! 

 Dahlbom was not acquainted with it when he composed his volume on 

 " Sphex in sensu Linnaeano," and introduced it for the first time, without 

 any regular description but merely in a synoptic tabulation of species, in 

 his " Supplementum " to that work. He gives as locality not Sweden, 

 nor Scandinavia, but simply " Europe," from which it may perhaps be 

 fairly inferred that he did not know its precise habitat, and had not 

 taken it himself, but received it from a correspondent on the Continent. 



As has been already said, Dahlbom gives no regular description of 

 the species, but the characters attributed to it in his table are as 

 follows : — 



1. Colour of abdominal markings " albida " — not " flavida." 



2. " Mucro " oblique, robust, somewhat obtuse — not slender, linear, 



and subemarginate — not emarginate. 



3. Abdomen with 4 to 10 spots. Mandibles yellow. Anus rufo- 



piceous. (It is by these last characters only that it is said to 

 differ from unit/luinisl) 



This is actually all we are told of the species except that it occurs 

 in Europe, and if these charactei-s, such as they are, be compared with 

 those of British '^ mandibidaris (?)'" it will be found that not one of 

 them is conclusive for the identification of the two insects, while some of 

 them decidedly suggest the contrary. It is true that " 3'ellow mandibles " 

 are a character of British " mandibularis " ; but they are normal also in 

 many European species, and may occur in almost any species {e. g. in 

 argentatus Curtis certainly (!) and, I believe, even in tuiiglumis). They 

 occur, so far as I have seen, invariably in the mandibularis of v. Dalla 

 Torre, etc. ( = variegafus). Then, the markings of British " mandi- 

 bularis " — differing in this respect from those of uniglumis — are rather 

 " flavida " than " albida " ! Nor is the anus in our British insect normally 

 red, but coloured, as a rule, just as in uniglumis — whereas it is red in 

 variegatus ! Nor does the number of abdominal spots in our species 

 (though it varies to some extent) usually exceed 4, and it sometimes falls 

 to 2 — in tliis respect variegatus certainly answers better to Dahlbom's 

 account of his mandibularis than does our species. 



X 



