﻿4 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



collection of the Eev. G. H. Eaynor (bred from Colchester), 

 shows a parallel variation to Mr. Betts's linearia, and Barrett 

 figures one or two aberrations of punctaria beginning to approach 

 it ; while a very similar scheme is normal in annulata, and is well 

 known among other branches of the Acidaliinas — Ptychopoda 

 aversata, deversaria, dec. Although I do not consider it always 

 expedient to give special names to single aberrations, the present 

 is sufficiently striking and definite to warra,nt it, and I therefore 

 christen it Zonosoma linearia a^h./asciata, nov. ab. 



EEDISCOVERY OF THE BRACONID METEORUS 

 VEXATOR (Hal.), WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE 

 MALE. 



By Claude Morley, F.Z.S., &c. 



In his " Essay on Parasitic Hymenoptera " in the old Ent. 

 Mag. (1836, p. 33), A. H. Haliday describes a new species, 

 Pei'ilitus vexator, in the female sex only — "Habitat cum praece- 

 dentibus rarus "=" Habitat in nemoribus passim frequens. 

 Femina, locis fungiferis autumuo." This duly appeared, with 

 no addition, in the Rev. T. A. Marshall's 1872 Catalogue of 

 British Hymenoptera, and the original description was reproduced 

 by the same author in his Monograph of British Braconidae 

 (Trans. Ent. Soc. 1887), with that of its supposititious male. 

 Both sexual descriptions were copied in Andre's Spp. Hym. 

 d'Europ. 1891, p. 86, with the remark: " J'ai ajoute ce qui 

 concerne le S' d'apres un mauvais exemplaire de ma collection ; 

 pourtant la reunion des sexes ne parait pas incertaine, a cause 

 de la grandeur exceptionnelle du stigma." In Entom. 1908, 

 p. 125, I gave a table of British Meteorm species, assigning 

 M. vexator a position based upon its description alone. This is 

 all we knew of the insect — one or more Irish females and a 

 doubtfully associated male. 



From a black, hemispherical fungus — almost certainly 

 StromatosphcBria concentrica — Mr. J. H. Keys recently sent me 

 from Plymouth two female M. vexator, which were bred along 

 with a lot of the clavicorn beetle, Diphylliis liinatus, Fab., during 

 August, 1911 ; no other host or parasite emerged from the 

 fungus, which constitutes conclusive evidence of parasitic as- 

 sociation. I at once enquired whether no males were also raised, 

 and Mr. Keys has kindly presented me with the only one bred : 

 in all six females and one male Meteorus appeared among 

 numbers of the beetle. 



The true male differs from that described by Marshall in 

 having the antennae no longer than the body, of twenty-six 

 joints, with the basal half dozen ferruginous ; metathorax nearly 



