114 IIYMEXOPTERA. 



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

 arc the low, minute, degraded Proctotrupids, Prestioicliia 

 nutans and Polynema nutans descrilied 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 especiall}^ the Diptera. A partial excei)- 

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

 Thaivmutosonia, where they are long and slender, and knobbed 

 as in the butterfly, and also in Tetralonia mirahilis of Smitii. 

 from Brazil. 



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

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

 Pezomachus, the workers of Formica and the female of MutiUu . 

 In these forms we have no striking resemblances to lower orders 

 and suborders, but a strong adherence to their own Hymenop- 

 terous characters. Again ; in the degradational winged forms, 

 we rarely find the antenniB pectinated ; a common occurrence 

 in the lower suborders. In a low species of the Apiari'a' , 

 LamjrrocoUetes ckidocerus, from Australia, — that land of anom- 

 alies, — the antennre are pectinated. This, ]Mr. F. Smith, the. 

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

 most remarkal)le bee that I have seen, and the only in- 

 stance, to my knowledge, of a bee having pectinated antennae ; 

 such an occurrence, indeed, in the Aculeate Hjaiienoptera is 

 only known in two or three instances, as \n Psam mother ma fluh- 

 dlata amongst the Mutillidce, and again in Ctenocerics Klvrjii 

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

 two other species of Po7npilidce ." Among the Tenthre- 

 dinidoi, the male Lojyhynis has well-pectinated antennoe, as 

 also has Cladomacra macropus of Smith, from New Guine;i 

 and Celebes. 



The wings of perhaps the most degraded Hymenoptera, the 

 Proe^o^rM^x'dfl', are rarely fissured ; when this occurs, as in 

 Pteratomus Patnamii, they somewhat resemble those of F*tero- 

 2^hor)is, tlie lowest moth. It is extremely rare that the com- 

 l)ound eyes are replaced by stemmata, or simple eyes ; in but 

 one instance, the genus AnthopJtorubia., are the eyes in the 

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

 darkness of the cells of Anthophora. 



