■jjo [December, 



EEVISION OF THE BRITISH SPECIES OF SPHECODES, LATR. 

 (INCLUDING NINE ADDITIONAL). 



BT EDWAED SAUNDEES, E.L.S. 



In my Synopsis of the British Hymenoptera Aculeata (Trans. 

 Ent. Soc. Lond., 1882, pp. 195—199) I described the few British 

 species of this genus then known to me, enumerating six in all. In 

 the same year Yon Hagens, of Diisseldorf, published the last of his 

 several important papers on Sphecodes, in which he describes all the 

 German species known to him, and gives figures of the genital arma- 

 tures of the males, and it is from this paper, published in the Deutsche 

 Entom. Zeitschrift, 26 Jahrg., 1882, 2*^3 Heft, pp. 209—228, pi. 6 and 

 7, and from specimens very kindly sent to me by v. Hagens himself, 

 that I have been able to identify our species with his. 



There is no doubt that the genus is a very difficult one to work 

 out, and that the species are superficially exceedingly alike ; but, at 

 the same time, the characters exhibited by the genital armatures of 

 the males are most pronounced, and it is only necessary for collectors 

 to extract these with a fine needle (which is very easily done when the 

 insects are still moist), to enable them to name their captures with 

 ease and certainty. Apart from these characters, the antennae and 

 alar hooks and puncturation afford peculiarities in most cases by which 

 the species may be recognised ; but in some (as far as my examinations 

 have gone) it is positively necessary to extract the armature to refer 

 a specimen for certain to its proper species. In the females it is 

 almost equally necessary to extract the terminal abdominal segment; 

 which is wont to get hidden under the 5th, as its dorsal valve affords 

 characters which are often most useful ; other characters appear ini 

 the number of alar hooks, the colour of the tibial spines, and in the 

 puncturation of the mesothorax, as well as in the sculpture of the 

 metapleurse. 



The really great difficulty is to assign the right females to the 

 various males, as the sexes are only to be found together for about a 

 month (m August), and even then, as several species sometimes colonize 

 in the same bank, the difficulty is scarcely lessened. The group ii 

 M'hich this difficulty has not yet been satisfactorily surmounted is thai 

 which was formerly known as epUppium, Kirby, but which now ini 

 eludes four British and no less than nine German species. Here tW 

 males are easily distinguishable, but the females are very much alike 

 V. Hagens has distinguished eight forms, but it still remains to hi 

 shown for certain which are referable to which of his nine males 



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